


A Skill Hell Hath Trained

by Revenant



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Animal Transformation, Community: werewolfbigbang, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Violence, Werewolves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-07
Updated: 2012-06-07
Packaged: 2017-11-07 05:19:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 33,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/427300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Revenant/pseuds/Revenant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam pulled into Red Lodge expecting a straightforward hunt, something to take his mind off the recent loss of his father to the demon that killed his mother. What he gets instead is the company of a hunter with sharp edges, a monochromatic view of the world, and an unconventional companion. Turns out the vampires might not be Sam’s biggest challenge with this hunt.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

The bar wasn’t anything remarkable- it loomed over the street, shadowed and dingy and unassuming. Weathered enough to ward off the better half of the population of Red Lodge, but not so unkempt as to cross the line into attracting the truly undesirables. It leaked nondescript country music out into the street. The stale stench of cigarettes hung in the air, though Sam couldn’t see anyone actually smoking. It was the perfect place for a hunter to go and unwind without having to bother with social niceties; everyone inside was just shy of downright rude and didn’t take too well to questions, no matter who they came from, unless those questions were accompanied by particular compensation. 

There was a time where Sam might have shied away from that sort of place, but that was long ago, mostly lost in memory. Back when he had thought his English classes and geography lessons might have been building toward something, some future that didn’t involve guns and knives and salt circles and Latin incantations. 

He had a pocket full of bills folded and held together by a silver clip, but he was certain he wouldn’t need to use them for anything outside a beer or two. Ellen had already given him all the information he needed. 

“What can I get for you?” the bartender asked, his chin tipped upward just a bit in a way that told Sam the man was more than willing to step over the bar and pound him into the dust if he gave any indication that it was required. The unassuming, laid-back college kid look Sam sported as a way of putting people at ease and encouraging them to discount him as a threat was sending the wrong sort of signals in a room of men with two weeks of grizzled facial hair and flannel shirts, where ‘different’ was more often than not a basis for a fight.

“Just a beer.” He dropped the money on the counter and kept his head down, trying to look awkward and uncomfortable and entirely wrapped-up in himself. The bartender uncapped a beer and slid it across to him with one hand while the other slipped the money off the counter, putting the change into the till and the rest into a pocket in his apron, the motion smooth and well-practiced. 

By the window, a man rose from his table, pulling a jacket the color of dried clay over top of a red and white flannel button-down. He blended flawlessly with the rest of the patrons in the bar with a disinterested and aloof expression on his face, but his movements were controlled and precise, not a single wasted gesture. Sam watched as the man turned for the door, confident that he had found what he was looking for. 

Casually grabbing his beer, Sam stepped away from the bar and called, “Hey, Gordon, man. It’s good to see you!” 

The suddenness with which the man stopped was enough indication that Sam had the right individual. Standing halfway between the table and the door, the guy kept his posture carefully casual, but at his side his hands clenched once and then released. 

“You’re not leaving already, are you?” Sam continued. “Have a seat, I’ll buy you a beer.”

His voice had been just loud enough to catch some attention, and if Gordon walked out he’d be remembered. It was a gamble, and maybe a bit of a mean one, but as Sam settled himself at the table that had just been vacated, he didn’t feel any remorse. 

The waitress who had been wiping down the table was only too happy to bring over a beer for Sam and his friend as Gordon came and settled into the opposite chair, his eyes slightly narrowed as he gazed across the table. “You seem to have me at a disadvantage,” Gordon said, the dark look he was giving stating eloquently to Sam just what the other man thought about being at a disadvantage.

“I’m Sam Winchester.” Sam wasn’t certain what to expect in response to his introduction. For all that he’d been raised in a hunter’s world, he hadn’t had the opportunity to interact with many. Generally it was him and his dad, and every so often there would be a gruff voice on the other end of a phone line giving advice or coordinates or asking for help. Sam could count the number of hunters he knew by name on two hands, and have plenty of fingers to spare. 

So it was some surprise to him when Gordon Walker, who certainly hadn’t been represented among Sam’s fingers before two hours ago, slumped back in his chair and grinned like they were the old-friends Sam had been making them out to be. “Son of a bitch,” Gordon said, grinning widely. “Sam Winchester. Your old man was one hell of a hunter, I was sorry to hear he passed.” 

Sam struggled to keep his expression neutral and his eyes focused on the beer in his hand; he hadn’t expected Gordon to know of him “Thanks.”

Gordon’s sympathetic expression lasted a moment before it was swallowed-up with a wide smile that bared a set of brilliant white teeth as the man continued, “From what I hear, you more than fill his shoes, though. Good tracker, great in a tight spot.” Gordon nodded to himself, like he approved of Sam, like he was pleased they had bumped into each other. He took a lazy sip of his beer before letting his arm fall back to brace lightly on the armrest. “ So. What brings you over to Red Lodge?”

“The murders,” Sam answered bluntly. “Paired with the cattle mutilations. Those two vampires were yours, I take it?”

Gordon glanced over as he took another pull of his beer. “Yup, I’ve been here two weeks.”

“You haven’t found the nest? What about the Barker farm?”

“It’s a bust,” Gordon said, jerking his right shoulder up in a casual shrug. “Just a bunch of hippies, though they could kill you with that patchouli shit alone.” He grinned again and shook his head, and then his expression flattened and he looked back at Sam with a casual expression belied by fierce eyes. “I’ve been tracking this nest since I killed a fang in Austin over a year ago, and I intend to finish every last one of them off.”

Sam raised his eyebrows and lifted his hands a little, placating. “I don’t mean to step on your turf,” he said, trying to sound casual. “Just offering to help.”

“Thanks, but I’m a ‘go-it alone’ type of guy.” The corner of Gordon’s mouth quirked upward in a sardonic smirk as he said, “But hey, I hear there’s a chupacabra two states over. Knock yourself out.” He tipped his beer back and this time finished off the bottle, dropping it down onto the table with a clank, and still grinning in a self-satisfied, smug way that made Sam’s skin crawl. He stood up from his chair and dropped a hand on Sam’s shoulder as he said, “It was real good to meet you though. Maybe I’ll buy you a drink on the flip side.” 

Sam watched as the man paced out of the bar, the door creaking closed behind him.

  
[ ](http://s160.photobucket.com/albums/t192/GoldSnitcher/Fic%20art/Supernatural/?action=view&current=Line1.jpg)   


Vampires weren’t all that difficult when it came down to it. Their particular vulnerabilities meant there were restrictions on their living situation, but for the most part they didn’t like to stray too far from everything they once were. The bigger the city, the greater the anonymity and the better the nightlife, the more vampires there were; Sam had yet to come across a vampire in a small town. Red Lodge wasn’t exactly booming, but it was big enough that there were a selection of possible haunts in town, and a nice range of prospective living spaces ranging from abandoned farms on the rural edges of town, to vacant industrial buildings.

It wasn’t like Sam was starting from scratch. He crosschecked the two victims that had brought him to Montana in the first place, and managed to put together a rough map of places they had frequently been seen in and around town. This particular vampire nest seemed to favor gainful employment which put them apart from any nest Sam had encountered before, not that he’d gone after a lot of vampires. Then again, their apparent commitment to blending in had been why Sam had initially mistaken the vampires for victims; the newspapers had described the ghastly beheadings in conjunction with the simple lives the victims had been living, and Sam had made an assumption.

Around six thirty in the afternoon, just as Sam had been coming out of the diner where he had stopped for dinner, Gordon’s red El Camino buzzed by. It was a particularly flashy vehicle, though Sam supposed that he wasn’t exactly flying under the radar in the Impala but at least his car was black. He followed Gordon down to the wharf with a certain amount of satisfaction: the wharf had been one of the places he had projected he would find at least one of the vampires. 

Sam was sure Ellen would have had a few choice things to say to him about it; she had made herself more than clear when she had run down the list of people who might have been in Montana hunting vampires and leaving a trail of decapitated bodies in their wake. When he had called her back to confirm that he had indeed crossed paths with Gordon Walker, she had more or less ordered him to leave Red Lodge, _“Just let him handle it, Sam. If he’s on a hunt you just pack-up and get back on your way.”_

_“But you said he was a good hunter!”_

_“And Hannibal Lecter is a good psychiatrist.”_

According to Ellen, Gordon Walker was very good at getting anyone who worked with him killed. Still, Sam couldn’t just let that chupacabra comment slide. He’d been hunting since he was a kid. He’d learned to fire a gun before he had mastered reading, and he’d been a precocious kid so that was saying something. There was no way he was going to stand for some asshole he didn’t even know patting him on the head and telling him to run along off to some hunt that any idiot could do. He’d taken down a chupacabra when he was twelve years old. He’d been alone and he hadn’t even had a gun; it had been easy.

  
[ ](http://s160.photobucket.com/albums/t192/GoldSnitcher/Fic%20art/Supernatural/?action=view&current=Divisor1.jpg)  


The wharf was a dim stretch of squat wooden buildings capped with rusted tin roofs, interspersed with wide sections of dock. Sam pulled the Impala into a space close to waterfront, the rest of the lot empty except for the presence of Gordon’s El Camino and one white van, which, given the late hour, was unsurprising.

Cutting the engine, Sam slid out of the car and out into the crisp night air, inhaling the smell of salt and fish and wet wood that never quite managed to dry. He pulled his machete from the trunk and tucked his gun in his waistband mostly out of habit before he closed the trunk of the car, walking with measured steps onto the dock toward a ramshackle hut clinging to a corner of the wharf. The lights that were interspersed along the expanse of dock were accompanied by lights clinging to the side of the building and, as Sam walked closer, there was a soft glow spilling out from inside the building as well.

There was a stack of barrels against the far side of the building, and after a cursory check around Sam used them to climb up and through the little rectangular window at the peak of the roof, which conveniently opened up quite close to the rafters.

The inside of the building was shadowed and cluttered, crates stacked at varying heights and containing god knew what obscuring most of the floor below. Sam dragged himself, carefully balanced, along the beam he was clinging to, toward the source of what little light the building contained.

In the far corner, sitting at a small square table with a single black plastic lamp clamped to the side of it, sat the night guard. Why the building required a night guard was beyond Sam, but he was there just the same, wearing light blue coveralls, a baton set on the table by his right arm as he sat hunched over what looked like that day’s crossword. On his coveralls, in a bright red script big enough that Sam could squint and make it out even given the distance, was a badge that read, ‘Conrad’. 

Sam stayed, perched awkwardly on the rafters and watching Conrad complete his crossword, and had just begun to wonder where Gordon was when the sound of rocks being thrown into the water just outside jolted Conrad from his single-minded focus. He looked up and, without grabbing his baton, ventured outside. Sam rolled his eyes, but figured that maybe if he were a vampire, he’d be a little overconfident as well. 

Sam scrambled down from the rafters, but the sound of a scuffle already obscured the quiet creaking as the water rocked against the side of the wharf by the time he hit the ground. Gordon’s grunts were interspersed by meaty thuds and the crash-splash of things falling over, some of it into the water and over the dock, and Sam wasted no time pulling his machete from the sheath on his belt and racing for the door, his heart already pounding in anticipation of the fight. He opened the door just in time to pull Conrad away from where he had Gordon pinned against the rippled metal siding of the building. 

Conrad turned, his fangs long and sharp, snapping and snarling as Sam struggled to keep the vampire at bay, while at the same time trying to lead it away from Gordon, to give him time to pick up his weapon.

Conrad didn’t seem to notice or care that he was being drawn away; he just kept throwing himself at Sam wholeheartedly. His breath was hot on Sam’s face, and his fingers dug bruises into Sam’s biceps where they grabbed him, but Sam managed to throw Conrad off him as they neared a sharp bend in the dock. The vampire staggered backward, his arms wheeling like a flustered chicken as he tried to prevent himself from falling. His momentary distraction was enough for Sam to heft his machete and start a clean swing. Across from him, equally armed, Gordon wielded his own blade in a smooth arch.

Sam swung high as Gordon went low, but where the vampire should have been cut-through twice over the machetes whistled through empty air as the vampire instead pitched his stocky form sideways, cleanly avoiding Sam’s swing as his right knee came up and clipped Gordon in the solar plexus, using the man’s own forward momentum against him. 

Sam stumbled, and his blade lodged into the side of a wooden crate. “Shit!” He struggled to pull it loose, keeping an eye on Gordon who was attempting to pick himself up off the ground as the vampire stepped forward, looming. 

With one hard yank, Sam freed his blade and wasted no time rejoining the fray, but the sweep of his blade was disrupted as Gordon kicked up and sent Conrad reeling back. The machete drew a clean swipe across the vampire’s chest, ripping the blue fabric of his coveralls open and cutting into his flesh. Sam could smell blood, metallic and sharp, but the resulting injury was in no way life-threatening. Nothing short of a headshot was going to drop the guy, and the wound only served to make him angrier. 

He turned on Sam, his thick arms swinging, heavy fists striking stinging blows to Sam’s chest and his face even as Sam struggled and failed to get a clean shot in with the blade. He felt the familiar burning ache of tenderized flesh, bruised and bleeding beneath the vampire’s fists. Conrad got a good hit into his jaw and Sam staggered backward, dropping his blade on the ground as he gripped the vampire’s arms and tried to hold him off. 

Apparently satisfied that Sam had been subdued, Conrad backed off. Sam collapsed against the wall, taking a moment to catch his breath and shake the low constant buzz from his head. A moment later, the buzz in his head suddenly switched into surround sound, ratcheting up a notch until it was a piercing shriek of a hum, persistent and disorienting, making him squint, like that would hold-off the hurt it was causing to his aching head. 

He blinked desperately, and saw that while Sam had been attempting to get his bearings, Gordon had landed on a platform staring up at an electric saw that was screeching happily. The vampire had the handle of the saw gripped in a tight fist and was pressing it down toward Gordon’s exposed throat, the hunter apparently too dazed to get away.

Sam jerked forward on unsteady legs, wrapping his hands round Gordon’s boots and yanking, but his clumsy rescue was cut short as the vampire released the blade long enough to clip Sam across the temple with a closed fist. The blow landed hard enough that Sam’s vision blacked out and he collapsed to the dock. 

There was the steady whine filling up the night and Gordon’s kicking legs and wheezing breath, and Sam knew all he had to do was stand up and get hold of the other hunter, but he couldn’t make any part of his body work, and he was going to be lying there and watching uselessly as another hunter died in front of him.

Something obstructed his view. A gust of warmth and fur brushed over Sam’s body before launching at the unsuspecting vampire.

Conrad staggered under the weight of the furred beast, the persistent screech of the electric saw almost drowned by the snarling and growling of vampire and beast. Sam took advantage of the distraction to force his body to move, dragging himself back toward his machete. 

On unsteady feet, Sam turned and for a moment, was forced to watch, the dog’s body effectively preventing any effort to decapitate the vampire, but then the dog pushed away from Conrad, dropping with unnatural grace back to the dock and bolting away. The vampire turned just as Sam swung his blade.

Conrad’s head dropped to the dock before his body, rolling across the slatted wood of the dock as Sam turned away, landed with a splash into the water as Sam watched the dog grab a mouthful of Gordon’s pant leg and pull him down and away from the whirring blade. 

“Damn,” the hunter said, his tone more amused than the situation warranted as Sam switched off the electric saw. He wondered how much of the other man’s reaction was owing to adrenaline. “Guess I owe you that drink, now.”

Sam tipped his head to the side, unable to resist respecting the way Gordon could so easily brush-off such a close encounter with certain death. His own mind was still reeling from what should, by rights, have been his and Gordon’s last moments. If it had not been for the dog, there was a very good chance they would not have made it. In some part of his mind, still numb and clinical from the fighting, he thought it was the best argument for getting a dog he’d seen, and idly wished he could have made it to his dad when he’d been a teen, aching for pet of his own. 

Sam shook the thought off sharply and managed a wry smile in answer to Gordon’s question. “Wouldn’t hurt.”

The dog at Gordon’s side growled, deep and menacing, too low and loud. The sound drew Sam’s attention and he realized with a sharp jittering shock as unpleasant as a bucket of frigid water, that it hadn’t been a dog that had leapt to their defense, but a wolf. The blade of his machete was up at the ready before he even had a conscious thought to defend himself, but the wolf’s attention was focused on something Sam couldn’t see. 

“Wow, relax there Chachi,” Gordon said, though amusement still laced his tone. At the sound of the man’s voice, the wolf turned its attention away from the darkness and looked, nonplussed, at the sharp blade Sam was holding up defensively. “It’s fine.”

Sam jerked his head toward the rather large wolf sitting opposite him as he pointed out, “That’s a wolf.”

“Obviously.” Gordon’s smirk wasn’t putting Sam at ease, the other man’s amusement serving only to agitate him further. “He’s my werewolf, and if you’re gonna kill him, you should know that I’d expect full compensation, and he cost me a fair bit of change.” 

Understanding came slowly, and it didn’t ease Sam’s mind at all. 

Gordon leaned forward and pulled up the thick brown leather collar around the wolf’s throat. “It’s tagged, trust me.” 

A little round silver medallion hung from the wolf’s collar. Sam could just make out the stylized etchings of a howling wolf surrounded with runic designs. Beside the medallion hung a small aged bronze elongated face with two bowed horns. Sam wasn’t certain which item Gordon was referring to when he claimed the animal was ‘tagged’; he made a point of avoiding the trade in werewolves.

Sam sheathed his machete, Gordon’s eyes following the movement, his easy smile still on his face. “So, about that drink?”

  
[ ](http://s160.photobucket.com/albums/t192/GoldSnitcher/Fic%20art/Supernatural/?action=view&current=Divisor.jpg)  


“So,” Sam asked. “Is that how you can track a nest of vampires clear across the country?” They were seated in the back of the bar, left alone for the most part, undoubtedly because of the animal that was lying disinterestedly beside their table. Gordon had told the waiter that the thing was a mutt, and whether it was the bill the hunter had slipped him, or the particularly sharp look, the waiter had been happy to leave it at that.

Gordon glanced down at the animal and huffed a little. “I’m not gonna lie, it certainly helped.” He finished his drink and gestured for another round, turning back to Sam with a knowing look in his eyes. “They have their uses.” Sam raised his eyebrows, which Gordon took as encouragement. “For a hunter, I mean. They’re exceptionally good at sniffing out the supernatural, to say nothing of their tracking skills. A well-trained, tagged wolf can be a hunter’s best friend.”

Sam’s gaze drifted over to the sleeping animal, its head resting on its crossed front paws. “He’s never tried to kill you? Or escape?”

Gordon laughed. “That’s where the training comes in. I got him off one of the best in the trade. Steve Wandell specializes in weres’ and he’s never had one turn on a man before. There’s a first time for anything, I suppose, but if you’re smart, and you take all the right precautions.” He shrugged.

The corner of Sam’s mouth quirked upward as he said, “I thought you said you worked alone.” 

Gordon laughed outright, tipped his head back and let his low chuckle spill out like Sam had made a joke. “A werewolf is barely even human,” he said. “Let alone company.”

The wolf’s ear twitched but it didn’t move or acknowledge Gordon’s words. Sam frowned. “It’s not a full moon, why does he still look like that?”

Gordon glanced back at the wolf, and there was a strange glint of pride on his face. “A bit of spell work,” he said. “You work the spell when the wolf is shifted and it traps them. It’s common misconception to think that a were’ in wolf form loses its human mind, well,” he corrected himself, “if you can call what they have a human mind. He spun the fresh bottle of beer that had been deposited at their table. 

“Some hunters,” he continued, “don’t add the spell to the tag; even when they’re human their senses are still heightened, but most consider it too much bother. This way it’s no different from having a dog.” Gordon flashed a devilish smirk at Sam, raising the bottle to his lips as he asked, “It bothers you, doesn’t it?”

Sam tried to appear nonchalant as he took a swig of his beer and shrugged. “Werewolves are dangerous. I wouldn’t keep something that I hunt as a pet. But,” he forced himself to add with a tight smile, “to each their own. He did save our butts tonight.”

Gordon tipped his beer bottle toward Sam in silent salute. “When it comes to vampires, I’ve found sometimes it pays to bend the rules. There’s a natural tension between werewolves and vamps, though I can’t figure why.” He smirked. “Maybe it’s a territorial thing. They don’t like other creatures munching on their food supply. Still, I can’t help thinking, if there’d been a were’ in my city when I was a kid, maybe things would have been different.”

At Sam’s puzzled expression, Gordon told a story about a little boy at home alone with his sister, late at night, on a summer’s eve, and the sound of a window breaking. It had been vampires that had killed her, but no one believed Gordon when he’d tried to explain. Sam wondered if that might have been because even as a kid, without knowing about the things that waited in the dark, Gordon had still had those sharp edges, still showed that excited pleasure when it came to violence and pain. 

Gordon set his bottle down onto the table, empty once more as he said, “Werewolves might be a point of contention when it comes to the question of lore against fact, but one thing’s for sure, they’re territorial beasts, and they would have run those vamps off.”

Sam shrugged, dismissing the other hunter’s suddenly somber mood with a simple truth, “Of course, then it might have been a full moon on a summer’s night, and a werewolf instead of a vampire.”

“Too true.” Gordon shook his head and Sam could almost see him pushing his dark recollections away. “Still, that was a long time ago.” His eyes flickered over to Sam and there was something shadowed and knowing. “I mean, your dad, that’s rough.”

Sam swallowed thickly. “You know about that?”

Gordon nodded. “I heard, you know how word travels with hunters.”

In fact, Sam had no idea how word traveled amongst hunters. His dad had always done his best to keep them more or less on their own.

Sam usually preferred not to speak about his father, didn’t want to hear any of the platitudes or sympathy from people who didn’t understand; couldn’t possibly. Maybe the liquor had smoothed the way, or maybe Gordon’s sharp edges appealed to Sam’s own, because he found himself saying, “We butted heads all the time. Most of the times, I don’t even think we knew why, I think it was mostly just because we were too alike.” 

They’d argued right before John died, as well. Sam could look back and realize that his dad had been keeping him away in an effort to protect him, but that didn’t put Sam at ease. If anything it pissed him off all the more. Maybe if his dad had realized Sam could take care of himself, then John wouldn’t have been killed. 

“He always seemed indestructible, I think because he was so bullheaded that it didn’t matter how hard he was hit, he’d always keep getting back up; he just kept going. When the…” Sam had to pause to clear his throat, washed the anger and the screaming loss back down with a swig of beer before he tried again. “When the demon struck out, I didn’t even think it had hit him at all. He barely stumbled. Then it was over and he just … he just fell down.” He shrugged. “That was it.”

“And now there’s a hole inside you,” Gordon said, when Sam trailed off. “And it just keeps getting bigger and bigger, and darker and darker, am I right?” Sam stared at the bottle in his hand. Gordon huffed quietly. “It’s good, you know. You can use that. It keeps you hungry.” Gordon leaned forward, tipped his head, pulling Sam’s eyes up from the bottle. “There’s plenty out there that needs killing and this will help you do it.”

  
[ ](http://s160.photobucket.com/albums/t192/GoldSnitcher/Fic%20art/Supernatural/?action=view&current=Divisor1.jpg)  


Sam dropped his keys onto the little plastic cactus in his motel room, before unbuttoning his shirt and pitching that and the T-shirt he had on beneath onto his bed. For all that he had been hunting on his own since he’d been eighteen, the silence felt empty and unnatural. All it had taken was three months of mad dashes across states with his dad to fall right back into old habits. There wasn’t even the possibility of a phone call any more, to pull him back onto the road, or direct him, however unwillingly, to a new hunt.

It was difficult to relate sometimes to the naïve and rebellious kid he had been, even if he was that kid only five years ago. Hardheaded and stubborn just like his dad, he’d always imagined a different life for himself, away from hunting and out from under his dad’s thumb. 

That rebellious thought had been quickly quelled when a lucky swipe from a _rawhead_ had sent John to hospital with injuries severe enough that Bobby had called Sam’s cell, told him to get his butt down there but to ‘be prepared’ just in case John hadn’t managed to pull-through. 

Bobby hadn’t known that Sam had left his dad alone knowing the man was set on a hunt. Instead, Sam had snuck out from their shared motel room without a word and hopped in the car his dad had passed on to him as a birthday gift. He had already crossed state lines and was well on his way to Stanford when his cell had rung. Somehow the decision to turn the car around and head back to his dad had become permanent, even though Sam could have easily delayed his acceptance a year. Sam wasn’t sure he could handle the endless monotony of classes and people’s inconsequential problems, knowing what bigger ones lurked in the darkness if he wasn’t out there killing them.

Sam stepped into the shower and tipped his head forward, turned the heat up until it burned. He barely felt anything these days. Barely cared any more. What Gordon had said back in the bar made sense: there wasn’t a point, not really. All that had ever mattered had been the hunt, so why not embrace it? 

There wasn’t a world beyond the hunt for him anymore. The people he counted as close were all hunters, Ellen, even Jo, and he couldn’t ever bring himself to speak with them about his dad, about how empty he felt. Their concern for him, their compassion, felt too thick, cloying to the point of suffocating. 

There was Bobby, more of a father sometimes than Sam’s own father had been, but Bobby’s view of what family was differed from how Sam had been raised, and even if the man would try to understand for Sam’s sake, Sam knew he wouldn’t ever be able to. It was easier, for them, to fall into their established routine, and that almost always included a hunt.

As for relationships, the best he had were one-night stands and casual acquaintances, and if no one was going to get close enough to be cut, why bother trying to smooth the edges he’d been shattered into? 

His phone chirped. Sam rinsed off the soap and slung a towel around his hips as he reached for it where it was resting beside the sink.

“Hey, kid,” Bobby greeted. “You didn’t call. I thought I’d check-in.”

Somehow the man always knew. “Yeah, it’s fine. I’m in Red Lodge after a nest of vampires.”

“Vampires, huh?”

“Haven’t found the nest yet,” Sam said, glancing over at the map that was still stretched across the sheets. 

“Well, make sure you’re smart about it,” Bobby said. “Remember you can call if you need.”

“Sure thing, Bobby. Thanks.” He tossed his phone onto the nightstand and dried off, pulling on fresh clothes, making a mental note to stop and do laundry.

He missed Bobby. The gruff old hunter was one of the few contacts that Sam remembered from when he was a kid that had survived the little murder spree the demon Sam and his dad had been hunting went on when it realized they were closing in. So many people had died, people who had babysat him, taught him various tricks of the trade.

It was true that when it came to hunts he was essentially on his own, but as usual, one brief phone call with that familiar rough voice on the other end of the line was enough to remind him that family didn’t end with blood. He resolved to stop by Singer Salvage when he was done in Red Lodge, maybe some time there would help him forget how detached he felt from the world.

It was late, but he wasn’t tired. Sam flipped through the television and huffed a laugh as he stumbled on a late-night showing of _Ghostbusters_. At a commercial break, he grabbed some loose change and stepped out into the cool night air, letting the chill wake him up, pull him from the dark thoughts that had been circling like carrion birds.

He made his way to the machine that promised ‘cool refreshing drinks’, and paid $1.75 for a drink that was neither cool nor particularly refreshing. He drank it anyway.

It didn’t pay to be distracted, but that was precisely what Sam was as he locked the door to his motel room behind him. There weren’t many ways to protect a room from vampires, and him turning around to lock the door didn’t do much but expose his back to the blur in the corner. 

He barely had time to spin around before a meaty fist connected with his already bruised temple. He got in a few solid punches himself, but in the end, the last thing he remembered was the sight of the beige rotary phone swinging through the air toward his head.

  
[ ](http://s160.photobucket.com/albums/t192/GoldSnitcher/Fic%20art/Supernatural/?action=view&current=Divisor.jpg)  


Sam came-to tied to a very uncomfortable wooden chair. He felt the creak in the wood beneath him and the tautness of the bindings before he even opened his eyes. Wherever he had been taken to smelled of dust and mildew.

Still feigning unconsciousness, he discretely tried the ropes and, straining his ears, estimated that there were two other occupants in the room with him.

“I know you’re awake,” a woman’s voice whispered next to his ear. Sighing, Sam blinked open his eyes. 

The woman was pale, with large piercing eyes and long hair. “My name’s Lenore, and I will not hurt you. I only want to talk.”

“Yeah, sure,” Sam said, more than a little sarcastic, turning his attention from the woman to the other figure in the room. Sam’s other captor was a man, tall and broad, with sharp shining fangs on full display as he glowered. “I might have some trouble paying attention to much besides that guy’s teeth.” 

“He won’t hurt you either,” Lenore assured him, then glanced over to the man and gave him an expectant look. “Eli.” The man, Eli, transferred his glare to her and, after a moment of tense silence, retracted his fangs. “There,” she said, turning back to Sam. “You have my word, you’ll be alright.”

“Thanks a lot,” Sam huffed. “But you’re not the first vampire I’ve met, so forgive me if _your word_ isn’t worth a whole lot to me.”

“We’re not like the others.”

“Right, sure. Of course you’re not.” He twisted his arms again and wished not for the first time, that he could reach the blade he always carried hidden in his boot.

“Notice,” Lenore said, still infinitely cool and calm as she stood before him, “that you’re still alive.” Which was true, but that was something that could be so easily corrected that Sam barely paused. “We don’t kill humans, and we don’t drink human blood.”

The statement was strange enough that it made Sam hesitate. He turned his full attention to her. “If that were true, why aren’t you all starving?”

“There are other ways.” Lenore wrinkled her nose slightly. 

Her grimace made something slot into place, and Sam realized, “The cattle mutilations.” 

“Don’t get me wrong,” she continued. “It’s not ideal. In fact, it’s disgusting. But if it allows us to survive...”

Sam frowned, sensing the emphasis she had placed on the last word. “Survive?”

“No deaths, no missing locals.” She shrugged, her curly brown hair sliding over her shoulder as she raised it in a loose shrug. “No reason for people like you to come looking for people like us.” 

The other vampire jerked forward away from the fireplace, snarling, “Why are we explaining ourselves to him, Lenore? We choke-down cow’s blood so none of them suffer, and yet tonight when they murdered Conrad they _celebrated_!”

“Eli,” Lenore cautioned, not raising her voice at all but somehow there was iron in her tone. “What’s done is done.” She turned back to Sam. “We’re leaving this town tonight.”

“Why bother telling me?” Sam wondered. “Why talk to me at all?”

“I’d really rather not,” she conceded. “But I know your kind. You’ll hunt us wherever we go.”

Sam’s eyebrows rose a little. “You’re asking me not to follow you?”

“We have a right to live, we’re not hurting anyone.” She jerked her chin up as she spoke, defiant and determined. 

“Yeah,” Sam huffed. “So you keep saying, but you seem to be a bit short on proof.”

Her eyebrows twitched upwards and then she stepped forward, leaned down so her mouth was by Sam’s ear, just close enough that it forced Sam to tilt his head to avoid touching. The unconscious reaction to her nearness meant he had to expose his neck. 

“You know what I’m going to do?” she whispered. Sam’s entire body tensed at the quiet purr. “I am going to _let you go_ , without even a scratch on you. How’s that for proof?” She stood up and stepped back, jerking her head once at Eli before retreating to a corner of the room, her gaze steady and unblinking as Sam was untied. 

As far as proof went, it was certainly worth consideration.

  
[ ](http://s160.photobucket.com/albums/t192/GoldSnitcher/Fic%20art/Supernatural/?action=view&current=Divisor1.jpg)  


“Vampires are killers,” Gordon said.

“Obviously,” Sam agreed, trying to keep his tone light. He hadn’t mentioned Lenore or his trip to what must have been the very nest he and Gordon were still ostensibly looking for. “But are there ever any exceptions?”

“Exceptions?” Gordon snorted. He leaned forward across the little circular table where he was sitting. “You know what I like about hunting? It’s black and white. We’re the good guys, the knights in shining armor, and they’re the dragons we have to slay.” He shrugged. “Dragons burn villages and eat maidens and little children. All they have in them is death and destruction. It’s simple.”

“Right.” It didn’t seem simple any longer, though. If what Lenore had said were true, if it were even possible, then Sam would never pursue that nest. There would be no reason to. Just as she said: they had a right to live. For Sam, the idea wasn’t to hunt things that were different; it was to hunt things that were _dangerous_. 

“So where was the nest, then?” Gordon asked.

Sam frowned, tried to cover his flash of surprise and anxiety. “What?”

Gordon grinned and tipped his head toward where his wolf was sitting. “He’s been sniffing at you since we walked in here, and growling at you for the past five minutes. Now I know my wolf, Sam. You want to tell me where those vampires are holed-up?” He smirked a little. Sam had felt safer tied to a chair in the middle of Lenore’s nest than he did with Gordon grinning that way. “Maybe you’re not the hunter I thought you were.”

“I hunt evil,” Sam said. “If they’re not killing people, then they’re not evil.”

“If it’s supernatural, we kill it,” Gordon countered.

Sam let out a sharp laugh as he shook his head. “Right, unless it’s useful, because then you just enslave it.”

“Is this about my wolf or the vampires? Or do you just not like me?” Sam glared, which only made Gordon chuckle. “It doesn’t matter, either way.” He snapped his fingers and the wolf leapt to its feet, trotting to the door. 

“Gordon!” But the man and his wolf were gone before Sam was even on his feet. A second more and the sound of an engine purring into life echoed from the parking lot. 

“Shit,” Sam muttered, stepping over to the little plastic cactus. Why had he felt the need to run anything by Gordon, anyway? Why had he bothered to even speak to the man? “Double shit.” The cactus held no keys, the hunter must have swiped them before he’d left with his damned wolf, which had the vampires’ scent and was probably going to lead Gordon straight to the nest.

Sam had been blindfolded on the drive to and from the nest, but that hadn’t stopped him from counting, or from using basic reasoning. They’d crossed a bridge, four minutes after that there had been a turn, and they’d been going uphill. Sam laid it all out with the map for references and then headed out to the farm that was the most likely candidate.

Determined, Sam jogged out of his motel room and down the steps, hotwiring the Impala and cursing Gordon Walker every minute it took to get out onto the road.

  
[ ](http://s160.photobucket.com/albums/t192/GoldSnitcher/Fic%20art/Supernatural/?action=view&current=Divisor.jpg)  


The sight of Gordon’s candy apple red El Camino confirmed Sam’s guess and he grabbed his machete from the front seat and his gun from the glove compartment before racing up to the house, taking the steps two at a time.

There was a part of him that was braced to discover that he’d arrived too late, that Gordon and his werewolf had slaughtered the peaceful nest and only blood and gore remained for Sam to find. 

That wasn’t what he encountered when he stopped just inside the main room to the right of the front entrance. With some sense of shock, Sam realized that it might have been the less disturbing of the two options.

Inside the room, the wolf was standing on a large wooden table, his fur ruffled up making him look savage and feral. He was crouching low, snarling and growling quietly but constantly, not sparing even a moment’s notice for Sam as he came to a stop by the edge of the table. 

Gordon had tied Lenore to one of the wooden dining room chairs and was in the process of cutting thin slashes into her skin, pausing periodically to dip his blade into a glass jar filled with a darkly red liquid that had the consistency of motor oil. “Heya, Sam,” Gordon greeted, his tone light and breezy.

Sam held his gun in his hand and wondered where he should point it: at hunter or wolf. “Gordon.” He stepped forward, tried to get a better look at Lenore as he asked, “What are you doing?”

“Poisoning our friend here with dead man’s blood,” Gordon explained, like he was commenting on the weather. “Most of the nest has already cleared out, but I’m hoping she’ll decide to be helpful.”

“Gordon,” Sam said. “Put the knife down and step away from her.”

“Yeah, y’know I guess you’re right.” Gordon dropped the knife onto the table with a careless flick of his wrist. “This bitch isn’t ever going to talk.” He picked up another knife almost three times the size of the one he had discarded and said, “Better to just kill her.” 

From its position on the table the wolf snarled and, astonished, Sam realized that it was not, as he had originally assumed, snarling at Lenore. The wolf’s attention was entirely fixed on Gordon. 

Sam held up his hands and stopped his slow progression forward. “I get it, okay? The vampire that killed your sister deserved to die but…”

“Killed my sister?” Gordon asked, confusion drawing his eyebrows together. Then suddenly his expression smoothed out once more and he laughed, shook his head like Sam had said something cute. “The vampire didn’t kill her, it _turned_ her. _I_ killed her, when I saw what she’d become.” He spread his arms wide as he said, “There are no shades of grey, Sam.” 

It all fell into place then and Sam felt like a fool that it had taken so long for him to realize it all. “You knew these vampires weren’t hurting anyone. You knew about the cattle.”

“Of course I knew,” Gordon said. “What difference does it make? If they kill today or three weeks from now or a year, it’s still killing and it’s what they do. Trust me, none of it changes what they are.”

Sam couldn’t contain his derisive snort. “ _Trust_ you?”

Gordon sneered and then hefted his knife. The wolf took a menacing step closer to where he stood, but Gordon ignored it. Instead, the other hunter pressed the tip of his blade to his own forearm and sliced just deep enough for a thick drop to well up from his torn skin. With his gaze fixed on Sam, Gordon held his injured arm above Lenore’s upturned face and let the blood drop down to her mouth.

In an instant her fangs descended and she hissed. 

Gordon’s triumphant grin fell quickly as, a moment later, Lenore turned her head away, her eyes closing as her teeth retracted. “No,” she moaned. “No.”

“You hear her, Gordon? It’s over. Let her go.” The other hunter let his wounded arm drop to his side, but after a second of stillness, he jerked the knife up, one hand grasping Lenore by the hair and yanking her head back as the other prepared to slide her neck in half. 

Sam raised his gun, already knowing he’d be too late to save the vampire, but in the same instant the wolf lunged over Lenore’s seated form, his front paws slamming against Gordon’s chest and pushing the man back. Hunter and wolf toppled to the ground, and Sam, eyes wide, jogged forward still prepared to shoot.

The wolf was crouched over top of Gordon’s prone body, the hunter’s neck held delicately between its jaws, teeth pressing enough to pucker Gordon’s skin, but not enough to draw blood. “Kill it,” Gordon whispered, the whites of his eyes glinting in the dark as he stared at Sam’s upraised gun, begged him to shoot the creature that held him down. 

The wolf growled low and did not release its hold, but made no move to rip Gordon apart. Sam’s gaze flickered from the plain fear etched on the other hunter’s face, down to sharp pointed teeth applying just the perfect amount of pressure, the skin intact though the threat was clear. 

Slowly, he lowered his gun, though he kept the tableau in his peripheral vision as he untied Lenore. “Kill it,” Gordon whispered again, holding his body stiff and still as his eyes followed Sam’s movement.

“You okay?” Sam asked as Lenore rose to her feet. She nodded her head, glancing over to Gordon briefly before turning away again. “How much time do you need to get clear of this place?”

“Not long,” she said, her voice rough and croaky as she forced the words out. “Most of the nest has already gone.”

“I can give you until dawn, guaranteed.” She nodded, a small thankful smile flashing over her face. She stepped away from the chair where she had been bound and then paused again, turning back to look at Gordon and then focusing on the furred beast that held him captive. “Good dog,” she said, amusement in her eyes. The wolf huffed, sending a puff of heated air across Gordon’s skin, making the man flinch. 

Sam waited until he heard the sound of the front door shutting and, a moment later, of the old pick-up that had been parked outside rumbling to life. He pulled over one of the dining room chairs and straddled it, his arms hanging over the back and the gun, cocked and ready, dangling from his right hand. “So, Gordon,” he said, his tone light. “We’ve got a few hours to kill, better get comfortable.” 

Sam had meant it more or less as a joke. He hadn’t expected the wolf to drop itself down, sitting on Gordon’s midsection as it pulled its head back from the man’s neck. In lieu of its teeth, the wolf pressed its paw just below Gordon’s throat, its sharp nails resting carefully against the vulnerable skin.

Sam watched Gordon quickly re-assess the situation, calculating the odds of overpowering the wolf before it took a bite or clawed at him and decide they weren’t in his favor. Sam readjusted the gun so it was propped on his elbow and aimed, finger on the trigger, at the man sprawled out on his back. “Hope you don’t have to pee,” he said, and settled in to wait.

  
[ ](http://s160.photobucket.com/albums/t192/GoldSnitcher/Fic%20art/Supernatural/?action=view&current=Line2.jpg)  


By the time the sun was creeping over the horizon and spilling cautious light through the grimy windows, Sam had secured Gordon to the same chair where he’d tortured Lenore. He was confident the knots would hold, but every hunter had a few tricks up their sleeve.

Patting the other man’s shoulder after checking the ropes, Sam said, “Don’t worry, I’ll call someone to come and get you after,” he paused and considered. “Maybe two or three days. Now,” he scratched the back of his head as he glanced at the wolf sitting in the front hallway. “Normally I wouldn’t consider this, but I think I’m pretty familiar with your philosophy, not to mention your techniques when it comes to anger management, so I’m gonna take your werewolf.” The wolf cocked its head and so Sam directed the last to it, “unless you feel differently about that?” 

In an instant the wolf was on its feet but not, as Sam fleetingly considered, in an effort to launch an attack. It glanced between Sam and the door and then back again; Sam shrugged. “Well, alright then. You hang tight, Gordon.” He shoved Gordon’s weapons together and set them on the old china cabinet, far enough and high enough that the man wouldn’t be able to shift the chair over and make a grab at the knife. He wanted to give Lenore and her nest as much of a head start as possible and with Gordon tied up, and without the animal he had used to track them; Sam figured they’d have a fair shot. 

Sam had been raised to believe that anything supernatural was inherently evil. Ghosts and ghouls and anything in between, intentionally or no, bred chaos and caused pain and misery and death wherever they went. His dad had believed, just like Gordon, that when it came to hunting there were no shades of grey. Sam should have listened to Ellen and just walked away, but if he had then Lenore and an entire nest of peaceful vampires would have been slaughtered.

He should have known better. There were thousands of shades of grey in the world and there was no reason why hunting shouldn’t be affected by the same color scheme. He held open the front door and watched as the wolf loped out into the night. It wasn’t over. Gordon would be nursing a vendetta and he didn’t seem like the type of man who could forgive and forget. 

It might have blown-over easier if Sam left the werewolf behind, but like Lenore, there had been no indication that the wolf was dangerous. Even when it had tackled Gordon it had been careful and the man hadn’t even been scratched. If Sam just turned and left, Gordon would undoubtedly kill the beast, and that would have been just as wrong as killing the nest.

“I want you to know,” Sam said, coming to a stop by the driver’s side door with the keys to his car in one hand and a gun in the other. “If you try to kill me or anyone I know, or anyone at all, I’m going to shoot you and I won’t even hesitate.” The wolf stared up at him, unblinking, its tongue lolling out just slightly as it panted. It seemed entirely unphased by Sam’s promise. 

When Sam opened the car door and stood aside, it loped over and then bounded inside, settling onto the front bench on the passenger’s side and looking entirely pleased to be there. “So long as we’re clear,” Sam said as he slid behind the wheel, pulling the car door closed and starting the engine.


	2. Chapter 2

“What do you know about werewolves?” 

“That’s a heck of a greeting, kid,” Bobby’s gruff voice echoed down the line and Sam was surprised to find himself smiling despite everything he’d just been through. “Why’re you askin’?”

“Because I sort of ran into one.”

There was a pause. “You ran into one.”

Sam shrugged, the action shifting the cellphone that he held to his ear. He glanced back toward the door of his motel room and then turned his back on it. “I might be traveling with one. Sort of.”

If he’d been talking to his dad, Sam would have been more confident about the reaction he should prepare for. John Winchester would have had a word or two to say, at a high volume, interspersed undoubtedly with heavy profanity. There would be nothing Sam could say to justify the fact that there was a werewolf laying in his motel room; especially nothing that started with ‘My gut told me it was safe’.

Despite Sam’s anxiety, Bobby’s only reply was, “Travelling? You picking-up hitchhikers or something?”

Sam huffed a shamefully relieved laugh. “You have no idea.”

“Sam,” Bobby paused, his voice low and rough in that way he got when he was considering getting angry but wanted to make sure he had all the right information first before he made the effort. “You taking part in the trade now?” 

“I didn’t buy him,” Sam defended. “More like I stole him off a hunter named Gordon Walker. Or maybe we’re both running in the same direction, it’s kind of hard to tell.”

“Yer not making a lick of sense,” Bobby huffed. “But I get that it’s complicated. Come on out to the house, I’ll get you both sorted.”

“It’s just…” Sam trailed off, glanced back at the motel room and lowered his voice, even if he was mostly confident that there was no way the wolf could hear him. “Am I crazy?”

“You’re damned right yer crazy,” Bobby said. “Gordon’s a piece of work on a _good_ day, and you just took a stick to a hornet’s nest.”

“No.” Sam sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “I mean, what are the odds I’ll be alive long enough to care about Gordon? Bobby, I remember what dad used to say about werewolves. Hell, I remember how he looked when he got back from hunting one.” And, the more he thought about it, the more Sam felt amazed he hadn’t been mauled in his own car as they’d driven out of Montana.

“Easy now,” Bobby said. “Take a breath. If he hasn’t eaten ya yet, then he’s likely not gonna.”

“Oh,” Sam said. “That’s reassuring.” Which, oddly enough, it was. 

He hadn’t thought twice when he’d requested a single room with two queen-sized beds. It was only on his way back to the Impala, when he caught-sight of the other occupant of his car that he began to slow his pace, took a second glance at the single set of keys in his hand and wondered if maybe it hadn’t been the smartest choice. 

Really, it had been the _only_ choice, he thought, justifying his decision to himself. Leaving the thing in the car would no doubt draw attention, and he didn’t want to get involved with animal services. Putting a werewolf in a room all on its own meant that it might get loose and hurt someone before Sam even knew it was wandering around. If they shared a room, Sam could make sure the wolf wasn’t doing anything untoward. 

The truth, though, was that the decision had been entirely instinctual, and since he’d slammed his door in Red Lodge and started the engine with the wolf sharing the front bench with him, he had been taking little to no precautions, because it just hadn’t felt like he’d needed any. 

Pinching the bridge of his nose, and trying to push the knot of guilt over being so quick to trust a thing his dad would have shot in an instant, Sam changed the subject, “Gordon mentioned it was tagged or something?”

Bobby’s grunt echoed down the line. “No way to tell what spells have been worked on him. Don’t take the collar off until we can figure it out. Is he talking much?”

“He’s a wolf,” Sam said, and then wondered if that hadn’t been evident in how he had been speaking. “Like, he’s an actual wolf.”

“Yeah.” Bobby didn’t sound like he understood why that should be a problem. 

Sam’s brows pinched together. He took the phone from his ear and frowned at it, then held it back to his ear and said, “So he can’t say much of anything.” Bobby chuckled and told him to get his butt in gear and get over to South Dakota. 

Inside the motel room, Sam was confronted with a very large wolf sprawled casually across the second queen-sized bed he had requested. The television he had left on was playing an episode of _Doctor Sexy M.D_ and the damned thing actually seemed to be watching it. Up close, without vampires or angry hunters as distraction, Sam could finally take a moment to really look at the werewolf. It didn’t look like much.

It was a wolf, undoubtedly and obviously. Perhaps a little bit larger than average, but Sam was not so familiar with wolves to judge properly. It was lean, with long, slender legs and big paws and nails that had tapped against the tile in the motel room as they’d entered. Grey fur shot-through with brown ran from the top of its snout down its back to the tail, but its legs, underbelly and chest were cream-white. As he crossed in front of the television to settle awkwardly onto his own bed, Sam could see its eyes were hazel green, with a keen awareness that he did not think was natural in an animal’s eyes. 

“What do I call you?” Sam found himself asking, immediately wanting to kick himself for voicing the question. He was talking to a wolf; did he seriously expect it to answer? 

The wolf lifted its head and stared blandly at Sam for a moment, then turned back to the television. “Well,” Sam said, more or less to cover how abysmally awkward it felt to be sharing a motel room with an animal he had been raised to believe would kill him without a moment’s hesitation or remorse while it watched a shitty soap opera. “I can’t just call you ‘wolf’.” 

The green-hazel eyes shifted over to him again, but the wolf did not move its head from where it was resting on its outstretched front paws. Sam had the sudden thought that Gordon likely had no qualms doing just that. 

“How about Sirius?” he wondered, thinking of the wolf star but reconsidering as soon as he said it at the recollection of the popular book series that had made memorable use of the name. The wolf looked unimpressed. “Remus?” he said, mostly as a tease. “Romulus?” The wolf turned back to the television with a sigh. “Lassie?”

 _“Dean.”_ Sam jerked and glanced around the room as the statement echoed through his mind, clear as a ringing bell. The wolf lifted its head and turned to look at him properly. _“My name,”_ it said.

“You talked.” It blinked at his statement, and then turned back to the television. Sam frowned. “Did Gordon know you could do that?”

 _“What do you think?”_ the wolf, Dean, said. Then added, _“Genius.”_

Sam found himself smiling, amused by the animal’s- human’s? - unexpected personality. Then the ramifications slid home. “You retain your mind in that form.” If a werewolf retained its human mind when they transformed then what did that mean when they killed humans? Either werewolves were a far more dangerous and twisted kind of creature than Sam had previously believed or, he thought, looking at the wolf sprawled lazily on the bed, hunters were gravely mistaken in their ideas about them.

Dean was looking at him in amusement, and Sam didn’t even want to start trying to analyze how he understood the wolf was amused. _“You don’t know much about werewolves, do you?”_

Feeling oddly ignorant and defensive, Sam’s answer was, “I know how to kill them.”

_“Not much mystery in that.”_

[ ](http://s160.photobucket.com/albums/t192/GoldSnitcher/Fic%20art/Supernatural/?action=view&current=Line3.jpg)

Dean was disturbingly silent when he wished to be and Sam found himself waking the next morning and experiencing a sudden rush of terrifying surprise to notice the second bed was occupied by a hulking great werewolf who was sprawled casually atop the blanket, seemingly fast asleep. Sam stared until, without any indication of waking, one green eye slitted open and stared back.

“We should go,” Sam said, breaking the awkward silence. It occurred to him after a moment that while he had to get up and get dressed, wash and use the bathroom, not to mention shove what few things he had withdrawn from his duffel back into place, the wolf had only to slink off the side of the bed to be ready. Its unblinking stare suggested it was thinking along similar lines.

Sam sighed and began shifting to the edge of the bed, mumbling, “Give me a minute.”

It wasn’t a minute, but Sam was well used to packing-up and moving along. He couldn’t be certain if Gordon would be on their trail but he preferred to assume the worst and be prepared. There wasn’t any reason to delay. 

He found Dean walking a slow circle around the Impala as he returned from dropping the room key in the motel office. The wolf was sniffing, nose ghosting over wheel-wells and glinting chrome, his tail twitching left and right as he concentrated. Sam held back, watching. 

After a moment, the wolf lifted a leg to the front driver’s side wheel. “Oh come on!” Sam said. Dean whuffed, sounding completely unashamed and entirely canine, and then sat expectantly by the door, waiting for it to be opened for him. “That was gross.” The wolf didn’t care, simply hopped up onto the bench, making its way to the front passenger side and settling down.

For all that Dean was a stranger, and a werewolf to boot, Sam found himself relaxing during the drive, contented and at ease in a way he hadn’t felt since over a month ago when he’d spent much of his time ghosting the Impala in the trail of his dad’s hulking beast of a pick-up truck. He hadn’t realized that outside of his anger and his regret and the overwhelming sense of loss that had plagued him since his dad’s death, Sam simply felt _alone_.

[ ](http://s160.photobucket.com/albums/t192/GoldSnitcher/Fic%20art/Supernatural/?action=view&current=Divisor1.jpg)

He ended-up driving straight through to Sioux Falls, pulling into Singer Salvage before the sun had a chance to rise, the sky grey and the air thick with damp as dew settled on the rusted cars stacked in listing towers around the lot. 

Beside him, Dean jolted upward from where he had been dozing, and pressed his nose to the glass of the passenger window where there were already dried smears. He huffed and his breath fogged the glass. 

“This place belongs to a friend of mind,” Sam explained, though he had already mentioned that he was heading to the safest place he knew. “Keep your teeth to yourself.”

The wolf lifted a paw to the glass, rubbing it against the fogged spot and peering intently through. Sam pulled the Impala to a stop and turned off the motor, stepping out of the car into the crisp morning air with a certain amount of relief to finally be able to stretch his legs. There had been no reason to drive through the night, except that Sam had gotten lost in thought and hadn’t felt ready to pull over. Dean hadn’t seemed to care, and for all that Sam knew, was perfectly happy to nap curled in the front seat when staring out the window at the passing scenery had grown dull.

Outside of the brief exchange in the motel, Dean had not volunteered any further conversation. Sam was certain whether that was because the wolf was naturally quiet, or simply in response to the remark Sam had made the other day, and the implied threat it had carried.

“Bobby?” Sam called, slamming the car door closed and taking another moment to stretch. An old Rottweiler sprawled on the hood of Bobby’s blue Ford tow-truck lifted its head and gazed curiously back at him. After a moment of close scrutiny, it dropped its head back to rest between its paws.

It was early, but Sam had no desire to take his friend by surprise and get a stomach full of buckshot for his trouble. He crossed to the passenger door and opened it wide before heading toward the front steps. 

The house’ door kicked open before he’d gotten very far and Bobby stepped out, shotgun slung over one arm as the other finished tugging on a red-checkered flannel shirt. “Heya, kid,” he greeted, his voice gruff but warm. Then added, “Easy, Rumsfeld,” as the dog’s hackles raised and it let out a low growl as Dean stepped down from the car. “I said, easy!” Rumsfeld jerked his head to look at his master as if he were strongly advising Bobby to rethink the order, then obediently dropped his rear-end down, sitting reluctantly but no longer rumbling with displeasure. He kept a mistrusting gaze fixed on the wolf. 

“So,” Sam said, with a bit of a shrug. “Here we are.”

Bobby shook his head as he came down from the porch, meeting Sam halfway and giving him a brief one-armed hug. “About time too, y’idjit.” He glanced to where Dean was sitting and nodded his head, expression oddly somber. “Already got word that Walker’s on the move and more than pissed, but as near as I can tell he’s heading in the other direction.”

Sam sighed. “That’s something I guess.” He grabbed his duffel from the trunk at his friend’s order and slammed the door of the Impala closed, before following Bobby and the wolf up the stairs and into the house.

In the front hall, Bobby jerked his head toward the upper level and said, “Room’s upstairs, you know the drill.”

Sam hesitated, watched as Bobby passed into the front room, undoubtedly heading for his books. “You gonna be okay down here?” he asked, glancing from the old hunter to the wolf that was trotting in the man’s wake.

Bobby glared at the insinuation that he might not be able to takedown one wolf in his own home if the occasion called for it. Sam ducked his head in apology and took the stairs quickly. 

Bobby’s was the closest thing to a home that Sam had ever known, and the man kept a room set up for when he stopped by, but there was only so much settling-in that Sam could ever manage and still feel comfortable. Too settled, and a kind of itch would strike him, niggling and persistent, like he was exposed and unprepared. Bobby had layer after layer of protections on every level of his house, covering just about any supernatural thing that might have an interest in attacking. There was even a panic room in the basement that, Sam was certain, could survive the apocalypse.

Even at Bobby’s, though, Sam never unpacked his bag completely. It was partially a matter of habit, and partially common sense. Even when he was too old to care if he lived or died, with bones too creaky to move, Sam was certain he would have a duffel bag stuffed with the essentials just in case. If there was one thing every hunter knew, it was that life was unpredictable, and it was impossible to know when a bounced credit card, a supernatural creature or the police, might catch up to you. 

With a certain sense of relief, Sam let himself collapse onto the wooden mission-style bed that occupied the far corner of the room. He might have found himself enjoying the sensation of no longer being on his own, but he certainly hadn’t managed to let his guard down entirely, which meant he’d been sleeping with one eye open since he’d driven out of Red Lodge. It might have been easy to dismiss, running on cheap roadside coffee and circling thoughts and maybe a bit of adrenaline, but he was exhausted, and Sam found himself falling into sleep before his head even touched down on the pillow.

By the time he came down the stairs there was sun sneaking through the grime on the front windows, filling the main room with a bright yellowy haze, just enough light to draw attention to the dust floating aimlessly in the air. Sam stopped on the bottom step and listened, trying to see where Bobby had gone.

The sound of a book thumping closed, provided him with a direction, and Sam made his way through the front room to the back. “What’s up?”

“Trying to figure out his tag,” Bobby said, and jerked his head toward the kitchen where the wolf was standing with his head bowed, lapping at a bowl filled with water.

Sam watched it carefully for a moment before he turned back to Bobby and asked, voice low, “He give you any trouble?” 

Bobby looked entirely unimpressed with the question and flipped another book closed, settling back in his chair as he said, “Just what do you think yer dealing with?”

“I dunno, I just,” he paused as the wolf stepped back into the room. Undoubtedly sensing the tense atmosphere, Dean hesitated, as if considering whether he should slink out before he got drawn into whatever argument was brewing, or stand his ground. 

Sam stared back at the wolf’s green eyes and sighed. When he answered, he was speaking as much to Dean as to Bobby. “Whenever dad told me about werewolves, it was always about how dangerous they were, how unpredictable. They changed into a wolf form for three nights of the month at the full moon, and they killed when they changed. They didn’t retain any human thoughts in wolf shape, and they never remembered what they had done when they changed back.” He glanced quickly at the wolf, who rolled his eyes so fiercely his head made a small circular movement; clearly Sam wasn’t saying anything it hadn’t heard a thousand times. Sam shrugged, feeling a little lost as he explained, “They were supernatural and dangerous, and he hunted them.” 

Bobby observed him, nonplussed. “You believe that, do ya?”

“Well…” Sam trailed off, couldn’t quite figure how to explain that everything he had been taught since he was a kid was warring with everything he had been seeing in the passed few days. If he _had_ believed all of that, then he should have been driving with one hand on the wheel and one hand on the trigger of a cocked gun. He should never have even considered bringing Dean into his motel room, let alone giving him a bed of his own without making some effort to secure him. Everything Sam had done since Red Lodge was ten kinds of crazy, and reckless to boot.

“Y’know,” Bobby said. “There’s a lot of bullshit lore when it comes to werewolves. Most hunters refuse to believe it, because when they ask around and do their own research what they’re really asking is ‘what’s the most common story told about the thing I’m hunting’. And ye see, that doesn’t work with weres’.”

Sam dropped into one of the empty chairs, setting the stack of books that had previously been occupying it down on the floor and startling slightly as a warm rush of soft fur passed inches from his head as the wolf crept slowly and carefully, half hunched and entirely tentative, over to Bobby’s side. 

Bobby smiled and settled a hand on the Dean’s head. “Anyone who bothered to do some research would find that the source of the legends was a massive attack in a German village sometime in the 1500s. The story goes that a pack of wolves, too big to be natural wolves, and too savage, tore apart the village and the farmers in the surrounding fields. It was over the course of three days during the full moon, and the carnage was apparently horrifying.” 

Bobby paused and, with a final scratch, removed his hand from the wolf’s head, leaning forward across the desk. “There were three survivors and they told their story as they travelled west; eventually they recounted it to some hunters who took off to try and kill whatever had attacked the village.”

“And?” Sam prompted.

“And it was a pack of wolves, alright,” Bobby said. “But not just wolves, men who could _turn into_ wolves. Their bones creaked and shifted and they peeled off their human skin, leaving it hanging from the trees. By the time the hunters found them and figured a way to kill them, the pack had destroyed another village, left nothing behind but scraps of flesh and splashes of blood. They were weak to silver, though, and the hunters killed them before they could destroy another settlement. Silver blades stabbed right through the heart and none of the pack was ever heard from again.”

“But,” Sam said, frowning. “That doesn’t sound like werewolves.”

“Doesn’t it,” Bobby said, with a bit of a smirk. “Because that’s what everyone thinks they are. Everyone who hasn’t actually bothered to read any of the accounts.”

“So,” Sam trailed off, his mind running through the various creatures he knew of. “A skinwalker? Or,” he sat up a little straighter as the comment about the skin hanging from the trees fell into place. “Shapeshifters. A pack of them?”

“Seems the most likely,” Bobby said. “It’s what the hunters figured they were, anyway.”

“I don’t understand how it went from an attack of shapeshifters in the 1500s to such a solid belief that werewolves are evil.”

Bobby sighed. “Wolves were common predators in Europe. There was a long-held fear of them, with stories told about them for centuries. Mostly, though, it was politics. Werewolves have a pack mentality, and that wasn’t limited to other weres’. Their village became their turf, and they were fiercely protective. There was more than just that one pack of shapeshifters. There were a number of attacks, some shifters, some skinwalkers, all of them posing as men who could become wolves. It started a widespread persecution of werewolves but most people don’t know about that, because they got lost in among all the witch trials.”

“It was a territorial thing?” Sam wondered. “Because the werewolves would run the other creatures out of town, if they didn’t kill them first?”

“There are trial records of accused werewolves claiming they would regularly do war with devils in order to protect their village. Even at the height of the witch trials, when paranoia and fear was at a peak, villages had a hard time convicting and killing people accused as werewolves.”

“Still,” Sam said, when he had taken a moment to let it all sink in. “Hunters do their research. I can’t see how they would consistently be fooled by a bunch of shifters and skinwalkers living off a centuries old vendetta.”

“You know yourself how the references get tangled up with names sometimes. Calling one thing something else. It’s like a game of broken telephone. The references are all there, but most hunters don’t much read ancient manuscripts from the sixteenth century.” 

“Besides,” Bobby added. “All it takes is one. Werewolves might be natural protectors, but isolated and alone, in big cities without any close friends or family to consider pack, a werewolf can be just as savage as the lore tells it.” He shrugged. “Anyway, that’s how you get to killing werewolves.”

Sam couldn’t help thinking of the small but persistent trade among hunters. His own dad had hated it, but Sam also knew his father had no difficulty hunting and killing a werewolf if he ever came across one. If those werewolves weren’t actually killing people, if it was all just some big mistake then… 

“Get yerself something to eat. You look like yer gonna be sick. Might as well have something to bring up.”

“Right,” Sam said. “Thanks.” The slow wave of horror that had been building subsided at Bobby’s gentle tease, but when Sam stood up the wolf held him with a steady gaze and he remembered with a flash of shame how close he himself had come to shooting it. “Right.” 

While Sam was sitting in the kitchen, helping himself to a toasted turkey sandwich and trying not to let the past week overwhelm him, Bobby came through with an open book balanced in one hand, the other scratching his cheek idly, the wolf trailing behind. A part of Sam -the small, guilty part- still wondered if maybe the werewolf was behaving the way he was because of a spell worked into the tag. 

“I think I’ve got everything to remove the tag. None of the spells worked into it are very complex.”

What Bobby Singer considered complex was a sight different from what Sam thought might pass for ‘complex’ to most people. There were a collection of herbs and tinctures to burn and plenty of archaic recitations, and Sam spent the better part of an hour standing more than a little uselessly off to the side, ready to make a move if something seemed to be going wrong, or to remove the collar when Bobby said it was alright. The wolf, for his part, sat in the middle of a red chalked circle in Bobby’s front room and tried not to appear too bored.

After about seventy-five minutes, as Sam was leaning subtly against an old wooden table, Bobby paused in his incantations and glanced up from his book. “Okay,” he said. “You ready for the big one?” The wolf turned his full focus on Bobby and looked appropriately solemn. Sam stood up from his casual lean and nodded. 

There were another few sentences that Sam didn’t pretend to understand, and in between one sentence and the next, Bobby nodded and Sam stepped forward, carefully undoing the wide buckle that kept the leather of the collar fastened about the wolf’s neck.

Immediately, the shape of the wolf began to ripple and blur. It growled and then whimpered, and Sam turned startled eyes to Bobby, only for the man to shake his head. Apparently, he had been expecting that kind of reaction. 

Backing-up hastily, Sam watched, more than a little horrified, at the obvious agony of the transformation. There was no creaking or snapping of bones, no ripping of flesh, but the transition was slower than he had expected, and it did not look pleasant. 

The wolf’s front paws scrabbled and jerked spasmodically, nails cutting in to the wood of the floor as paws stretched and elongated until fingers, tense and shaking, became recognizable. 

Along forearms and up to his shoulders, across his back and hips and legs, fur stood-up on end, the color eking out as it thinned and shrunk inward, leaving strikingly pallid skin in its wake. Dean’s growling and whimpering continued until it became a deep, hiccupping sob as all the while his body twitched and jerked. 

Then, as suddenly as it had begun, it stopped.

In the center of the chalk circle was a man, curled in on himself, his legs tucked close to his chest. His dark blond hair hung long with soft waves curling passed his ears to his bearded chin. His skin was pale and dusted with freckles, and his body was whipcord lean with the rounded shape of muscles hinting beneath the flesh, though his bones were perhaps more pronounced than might have been considered strictly healthy. 

For all that Sam had been wrapped up in thoughts of his new traveling companion, he had always thought of the wolf, and it had never once occurred to him to wonder about the man. 

Dean blinked open his bright green eyes and brought himself cautiously to a sitting position, his legs drawn-up to preserve some sense of modesty. “Well,” he said, his voice rough and more than a little hoarse. “This is awkward.”

[ ](http://s160.photobucket.com/albums/t192/GoldSnitcher/Fic%20art/Supernatural/?action=view&current=Divisor.jpg)

Dean didn’t seem at all ashamed by his nudity, but he accepted the clothes Sam brought down from his duffel in silence, ducking his head a little and holding the folded stack somewhat uncomfortably. Bobby and Sam retreated to the kitchen to give him a bit of privacy. 

Sam let out a long whoosh of breath. “What the hell,” he said. He wasn’t even entirely certain what he was encompassing in his statement. Maybe all of it, maybe his shock at witnessing the shift from wolf to man; maybe the naked form that had been left in place of the wolf.

“Did you know it was going to be like that?” Sam cleared his throat because he had been wondering mostly about the nudity, which he should have been expecting but hadn’t. Somehow asking Bobby about that seemed ridiculous, when Sam knew it shouldn’t matter to him. “Painful, I mean?”

Bobby shrugged; his hands stuffed in his pockets, looking a little wide-eyed himself.

“Of course it would hurt,” a new voice interrupted, roughened and low from lack of use. “It’s like sitting still for three years and then getting up and running a marathon. It’s not gonna be pretty.”

“Three years?” Sam said, directed to the wolf, to Dean, who was standing awkwardly in the doorway to the kitchen. 

“Around that, yeah.” Dean shrugged, “Once I get back in the habit of shifting, it’ll be quicker and … less of a production.” He turned to Bobby. “Thanks, by the way, for…” he waved his hand a little as he trailed off.

“Don’t worry about it,” Bobby said. “You’re welcome to stay here, long as you need to get things in order.”

“Oh,” Dean said, suddenly dazed, like it hadn’t occurred to him that he was a person again and had all of those so very human concerns to worry about: clothes, money, a place to stay, an identity, the list carried on. “Well, that’s very kind but I…”

“Bullshit,” Sam said, cutting the man off before he could come up with an excuse to rush away into the night. “No one’s missing you, or else they would have found you by now. You were completely naked all of three minutes ago, there’s no way you have a wallet with money and I.D. stowed away, if you have any I.D. at all. You won’t last a day out there.”

Bobby shot him a scolding look. “Easy.” 

Dean opened his mouth like he was about to argue, but Sam saw the quick-flash of green-eyes over to Bobby, who was still staring reproachfully at Sam. Dean said, “Yeah, alright. If it’s not too much trouble. Just for a little while.”

“No trouble at all,” Bobby assured. “Least I can do, seeing as you managed to keep this idjit here from getting himself killed.”

Catching the quirk on Dean’s lips made Sam bristle even more. “The vampires weren’t killing people,” he defended.

“You’re a magnet for trouble, kid,” Bobby said. “You’d have found a way to convince ‘em to make an exception, I’m sure. ‘Sides,” he added. “I was talkin’ about Walker.” Sam couldn’t really disagree there. 

“I can pull a few strings, get your I.D. sorted out, if you need,” Bobby continued. 

“Uh, yeah,” Dean said, his head ducking down again. Sam noticed that he had the collar gripped in his left hand, his fist curled tight around it. After a moment, the other man nodded again, to himself, and took a step back.

“Dean,” Sam said.

“I know,” Dean said, waving a dismissive hand. “If I make a move to hurt anyone, you’ll put a piece of silver in me.”

“That’s not what I was going to say,” Sam said, feeling the hot-slide of guilt wash through him. “Just…” but there was no way to explain himself. Dean did not seem the sort of person to place much stalk in words, anyway. Flashing a small smile he said, “You’ll be safe here.”

[ ](http://s160.photobucket.com/albums/t192/GoldSnitcher/Fic%20art/Supernatural/?action=view&current=Divisor1.jpg)

There was no reason for Sam to stay at Bobby’s, but he couldn’t quite make himself go. A tight curl of conflicting emotions reared and writhed in his belly whenever he considered getting back on the road. The emotions were too knotted for Sam to make much sense of, but he knew enough to pinpoint the curl of guilt he felt, for his mistrust of Dean and for his part in the whole mess between hunters and werewolves. He wasn’t foolish enough to think that just because he had never physically pulled the trigger, he hadn’t contributed in other ways. For one thing, he had always blindly followed his father’s word about them, and never once thought to look deeper into the lore. 

It made the idea of leaving the salvage yard a fleeting one, barely considered before it was dismissed. Bobby had always been like a second father to him, and Dean was an intriguing mystery. An infuriatingly quiet mystery, which had spent most of the day sacked out on Bobby’s couch. 

With Sam occupying the guest room, Bobby had brought down some bedding and some towels, and slid the doors to the front room closed so Dean could have a bit of privacy. After sleeping through most of the day, the man had snatched up the towels and a pair of scissors Bobby had presented when asked, and disappeared into the washroom. 

He emerged, about an hour later, in a cloud of steam, freshly washed and still damp from his shower. His hair that had been hanging almost to his shoulders was trimmed short and mussed, his beard gone except for a faint trace of shadow along his chin. 

Bobby had made a few calls and set the wheels in motion to get Dean settled with everything he might need, though it would take some time to come through. Sam wondered, as he watched this all with his nose buried in a book, about that expanding part of himself could not let this strange detour his life had taken since Red Lodge to come to an end.

[ ](http://s160.photobucket.com/albums/t192/GoldSnitcher/Fic%20art/Supernatural/?action=view&current=Divisor.jpg)

On his way up to bed, Sam found his steps slowing until he came to a stop by the wooden sliding doors that blocked-off the front room. The heavy oak doors hadn’t been closed properly, leaving a thin crack, which allowed him to see where Dean was seated on the couch, the thick brown leather collar he had worn for three years as a wolf held in one hand. 

Sam tapped twice on the side of the door and smiled as Dean glanced up at him. He slid the right oak panel further to the side as he asked, “You okay?”

“What?” Dean asked, then followed Sam’s pointed look down to the collar in his hand. “Oh, yeah.” He waved the strip of brown leather a little. “The other pendant,” he said, “it belonged to my grandmother. Sort of a family heirloom, I never took it off.” He cast a wry glance at Sam as he added, “It was supposed to be a good luck charm.”

Sam remembered the strange horned face that hung from the collar alongside the circular disc that featured the howling wolf. “You were close to your grandmother?” It was difficult to imagine what it would be like to have an extended family to fuss over and annoy him, but Sam thought he might have liked it.

“She lived with us,” Dean said. “My parents and me.” The collar shifted in his hand and he gave a quiet hiss and then chuckled at himself. When he caught Sam’s look, he smiled wryly. “Silver,” he explained. “Wouldn’t do if a wolf could somehow get free of his collar.”

One of the spells worked into the tag, Sam knew, had been a pretty nastily debilitating curse that would kick-in if the collar were removed without the appropriate incantation being spoken. A pretty sure-fire way to make certain the werewolf wouldn’t break free. He watched as Dean dropped the collar with false casualness onto Bobby’s desk. “Good night,” he said, a little pointedly.

Sam stepped back, reminded suddenly that he had only just met Dean, and that the other man had been mistreated by hunters for over three years and had no reason to expect any different from Sam, especially given Sam’s comments over the course of their road trip. “Right,” he said. “Good night.”

[ ](http://s160.photobucket.com/albums/t192/GoldSnitcher/Fic%20art/Supernatural/?action=view&current=Divisor1.jpg)

Sam found himself lying awake in the middle of the night, his thoughts whirling with memories of his father after another of their no-holds-barred fights had left them both red in the face. _“Family’s everything, Sammy,”_ John had said, half-turned away so Sam could see only a peak of his father’s profile. He could remember that even seeing that much of his father had made Sam want to snarl. _“Nothing else, none of it, matters. Sooner or later, you’re going to realize that.”_

He thought about the werewolves his dad had hunted; there hadn’t been many, mostly when Sam had been a gangly, awkward youth, but even if his dad had killed only one, it would have been too many. 

If it had been him, Sam imagined he would have been furious and bitter, and undoubtedly less than eager to entertain the idea of help from a hunter, no matter how badly he needed it. Yet Dean had looked only slightly awkward and maybe, if it had been anyone else, embarrassed, at Bobby’s offer. His only memento from his family was stuck on a collar that had symbolized his enslavement, surrounded by silver that rendered it impossible for him to reach, but he hadn’t snarled at Sam or sneered. He hadn’t asked for help, either.

Sam shifted beneath the thin cover of his sheet, turning to lie on his other side, his mind preoccupied with circling thoughts and nowhere nearer to falling into sleep. There was so much in the situation that was beyond messed-up that Sam barely knew where to begin sorting through it all. He no longer questioned whether or not he wanted to, he tried not to think about his reasons, either.

Sighing, Sam pulled himself from beneath the blankets, rolling to his feet and moving to rummage through his duffel. After a moment, he withdrew a round golden amulet, the markings on its circular face rubbed almost smooth but no less effective. Carefully, he unknotted the black leather slip cord and let the round disc drop back to his bag.

Barefoot, in his boxers and the T-shirt he had gone to bed in, Sam crept down the stairs, confident enough in his ability to move silently that he didn’t bother to dress. Just as carefully, he pushed aside the heavy sliding door and found his way in the faint light drifting in from the front windows, to the table where Dean’s collar still sat, resting beside the book he had apparently been reading.

It was difficult in the dark, to free the small pendant from the collar, but Sam was familiar enough with knots that it didn’t take him long to thread the little bronze elongated face onto the leather cord, tying it off before he set it back down, far enough from the collar so Dean would have no trouble reaching for it. 

It wasn’t anything, not really. A gesture, barely enough to hold any weight to it, but Sam felt a little more at ease for having done it, one small thing that was in his power to correct. When he turned back toward the door he felt a prickling awareness, and squinted through the darkness toward the couch where Dean was lying, his green eyes opened and focused keenly despite the dark.

Sam should have known better than to attempt to sneak passed a wolf. “I was just,” he said, and paused, at a loss to explain what he had been doing. Painfully aware that, depending on when Dean had awoken, it might simply look as if Sam had broken into the front room to loom over the man as he slept. “Your necklace,” he blurted. “Or, the pendant,” he corrected, gesturing toward the table, oddly relieved when Dean’s eyes released their hold on him and focused on the necklace. 

“It’s not much,” he said, pleased that he no longer sounded like a stuttering fool. “Just temporary, until you get a chain or something.” Dean’s eyes shifted back to him, and Sam started stepping backward, toward the door. “I didn’t mean to wake you up. Good-night.” He slid the door closed and dropped his head forward, releasing a long breath, more than aware that he had acted like an idiot, but equally certain that the gesture, however ill-timed, had been the right thing to do. 

It didn’t mean sleep came any easier, but at least while he waited for it, his thoughts weren’t pivoting on twisted guilt and remorse.

[ ](http://s160.photobucket.com/albums/t192/GoldSnitcher/Fic%20art/Supernatural/?action=view&current=Divisor.jpg)

Bobby had breakfast going when Sam staggered down the stairs. Usually it was an ‘every man for himself’ sort of affair, but every so often Bobby was in the sort of mood that lent itself to big spreads of bacon and eggs and waffles and strong coffee. Sam dropped into a chair gratefully and breathed in. “Smell’s good.”

Bobby turned around, a towel thrown over one shoulder with a pan full of sizzling bacon and scraped a little pile onto the edge of Sam’s plate. “Bacon,” a sleep-roughened voice purred as Dean stepped into the kitchen, dropping, boneless, into a chair. He groaned in pleasure as he picked up a full strip of bacon and dropped it into his mouth, head tipped back. Sam stared. “This is amazing,” Dean said, still chewing. 

Bobby smiled in amusement as Dean leaned across the table and snagged a piece of toast, and Sam sat there for a moment, feeling frozen and thinking _‘oh’_ , in a sort of dawning realization. His mind stuck on that image of Dean, his head tipped back, throat long and exposed, and his eyes closed in bliss. 

Sam had noted before that Dean was attractive. It was impossible to ignore and not much of a revelation, Sam had noticed it almost in passing, like he had the color of Dean’s eyes and hair. Somehow it hadn’t occurred to him that Dean was not only attractive, but also attractive _to Sam_.

He was startled out of his thoughts by a hand waving back and forth in front of his face. “What’s wrong with you?” Dean asked, his mouth full and his brows pinched with concern.

Sam felt more than a little dazed. His eyes dropped away from Dean’s face and he found himself focusing on the little bronze head hanging from the leather cord. “You’re wearing it,” he said, mostly to himself. Dean’s frown increased, but Sam was already pushing back his chair. “I almost forgot,” he said, rushing out of the room to the front hall where he had hung his jacket. He came back and thrust three rectangular pieces of plastic in Dean’s direction. “Bobby’s getting your real I.D. sorted, but I thought you could use these in the interim. Or maybe if you decide to keep-up hunting.”

Dean wiped his hand on his jeans before he accepted the fake I.D.s glancing at the names carefully. “These are all old, dead guys,” he noted.

Sam pursed his lips. “They’re novelists,” he corrected, perhaps a bit primly. “And they’re fake I.D.s, anyway. It’s not like flashing a card claiming you were Han Solo would be at all convincing.”

“That would be sweet,” Dean said, then pocketed the cards. “For future reference, you could at least go for something cool, like John Bonham.” He grabbed at his mug of coffee, still watching Sam out of the corner of his eye. “But thanks,” he added, and then took a large sip from his mug. “Hey, Bobby. You got any more of that bacon?”

Sam stepped back as Bobby turned and started scolding Dean for eating the whole plateful of bacon. He dropped back into his chair and pushed around his scrambled eggs with his fork for a minute, before settling back into eating. Smirking to himself when Bobby gave-in and emptied the rest of the pack of bacon into a pan.

“You’re going to give yourself a heart-attack,” he murmured.

Dean scoffed. “Dude, _three years_ , that’s just too long to go without a good breakfast.” He leaned forward and pointedly eyed the waffle on Sam’s plate. “You gonna eat that?” Sam sighed and surrendered his waffle. He decided not to look too deeply into his earlier reaction to Dean. With any luck, the man would eat Bobby out of his entire supply of bacon in one morning, and Sam wouldn’t have to witness his almost obscene enjoyment of it again.

[ ](http://s160.photobucket.com/albums/t192/GoldSnitcher/Fic%20art/Supernatural/?action=view&current=Divisor1.jpg)

Sam figured that he might as well take advantage of being at Bobby’s and give his car a bit of attention. He was halfway beneath her hood when a bright streak of fur raced passed in his peripheral vision and made him jump, his head thunking solidly against the cool metal of the Impala. He stood up, rubbing the bruised part of his head, cursing as he pivoted, trying to figure if he were under attack. 

Dean, in his wolf form, was messing with the old Rottweiler that Bobby kept chained at the front of the house, the poor dog yapping and bouncing and raising all kinds of hell as Dean sat paused just out of reach. He flicked his tail and then, in a smooth bound, took off again, disappearing behind a stack of old cars.

In the evening, after Bobby had already retired to his room and most of the main floor was left to darkness, Sam stopped by the front room on his way up the stairs. He didn’t knock, just leaned there casually and waited until Dean looked up from the book he’d been idly flipping through. “What was up today?”

Dean frowned. “What do you mean?”

“Running around the yard in wolf form,” Sam elaborated. “I was surprised to see you like that. Don’t you need a break from it?”

Dean shrugged. “It’s what I said, dude. I’ve been in one shape for three years, and shifting is like a muscle. I’m just trying to get back in shape.”

“Any luck?”

Dean grinned. “Yeah, some. Hurts less, now.”

“I wondered,” Sam said, and then paused, considered dismissing the question that had been circling in his head since Red Lodge. “The tag. How come you were able to turn on Gordon? Shouldn’t one the spells have prevented that?”

“The tags,” Dean snorted derisively. “There’s no magic that can make a wolf something it’s not, all those tags can do is keep it down for a while. Hunters think that because so few of their slave dogs attack their masters it must be something impressive in the spell work.”

“But it’s not.”

Dean quirked an eyebrow, and then admitted, “It’s not all bullshit. The spells keep us stuck and they keep us tethered. They don’t make us tame. The most they manage is a crushing weight on our free will; it keeps us in line, makes it easier to submit and a hell of a lot harder to disobey.”

“You can, though,” Sam said. “Disobey, I mean. Why don’t more wolves turn against their masters?”

Dean turned away, his eyes focusing on something far away, like he was lost in a memory that Sam couldn’t see. “If you feel strongly enough about something, you can overtake the spell. Most hunters,” Dean continued. “They’re not all that bad. A warm place to sleep, food to eat, relatively protected and some semblance of company,” he shrugged; Sam caught a brief flickering of green as Dean glanced toward him. “I guess most weres’ just stop caring about other things too much after a while.”

Sam let the silence hang, struggling to find something to say even if there didn’t seem to be anything appropriate. Dean had already turned back to the book he had been holding closed with one finger, apparently neither expecting nor wanting to hear whatever Sam might come-up with. 

He moved to leave, but found himself stopping before he reached the door. “I just,” Sam paused. “You can totally ignore me, if I’m overstepping or whatever. But, how did you become a werewolf?”

Dean smirked, his eyes flickering-up from his book. “I didn’t,” he shrugged. “People don’t _become_ werewolves. You are or you’re not.”

“So, you were just born that way.”

“Yeah, pretty much. I mean, it takes a while, you don’t just pop out in wolf form or something.” Sam grimaced at the unpleasant mental image. “My whole family were wolves, and the little town we lived in, well, most of them were all part of a wolf pack. To the rest of the villagers, we were like a secret everybody knew.”

Sam smiled at the thought. “What was it like? Growing up in the pack?”

“I didn’t.” Dean looked away. “My family died when I was a kid. The alpha took me in and raised me, but there wasn’t much of a pack by then.”

Sam wanted to ask how it had happened, but he already knew: hunters. One of them, or maybe a group, but they must have stumbled on that ‘secret everyone knew’. “My parents are dead, too,” Sam found himself saying, though he wasn’t sure why. “My mom died when I was just a baby, but my dad…” It flashed through his mind, then, in horrible detail. 

“We were hunting the thing that killed her. It was a demon, and he was powerful and he knew we were after him. There was a fight, and,” he paused, remembering the deep-seated satisfaction as the stuttering bright electric shocks zinged around the figure who toppled to the ground. “He was possessing someone and I shot him with this gun that can destroy demons. I killed some guy who probably had no idea that demons were real, but not before … not before it killed my dad.”

The moment he finished speaking, Sam felt foolish, suddenly painfully conscious of how little he knew Dean. Undoubtedly the other man would consider the story more than over-share, and Sam suddenly wondered if he should apologize. It had felt natural, just a minute ago. Felt like talking to Dean about his family had been the most normal thing. Sam felt his cheeks flush and wished he had bitten his tongue. 

The silence stretched, tense and heavy, like it was holding its breath, and after a moment Sam snuck a quick glance to Dean’s face, hoping to read something of the other man’s reaction in his usually expressive eyes. There was no clue for Sam to find in Dean’s expression, though, and he looked away again.

“You think,” Dean said into the quiet. “That if you hadn’t been so hung up on killing an innocent human you might have shot sooner, and your dad might have lived?” Sam did think that, couldn’t help but think it. He turned and headed back toward the hall. 

“Hey, Sam?” Dean said. Sam paused and half-turned so he could face the other man. Dean’s eyes were bright and glinting in a reflection of moonlight, half of his face in shadow. “That instinct,” he said, and then corrected, “that hesitation. You did it with Lenore, and you did it with me, too. Sometimes, there is another way.” He tipped his head to the side and suddenly the shadows were gone, and his green eyes lit with something more than moonlight, the corners of his mouth quirking just slightly upward as he said, “Of course, if you’d been a werewolf, you wouldn’t have needed some weird-ass gun to take-down the demon. In fact, you probably could have found the thing a hell of a lot sooner.” He flashed a cheeky smirk Sam’s way as he shrugged, “I guess not everyone can be perfect.”

Sam huffed a startled laugh. “Perfectly _ridiculous_ ,” he said, as he watched the exaggerated way Dean started to settle down into the sofa, punching at the pillow to fluff it and then turning his head back-and-forth as he nuzzled into it, creating an indentation in the middle that completely defeated the efforts to fluff the thing.

“Perfectly _awesome_ ,” Dean muttered, his eyes closed. “Now shut up, I’m trying to sleep.”

“Still need your beauty rest?” Sam said, fighting-back the urge to smile. “Apparently perfection is remarkably high-maintenance.” Dean gave a noncommittal grunt, his body completely lost in shadow as the back of the couch shielded him from the errant strands of light from the moon. 

When Sam turned back toward the stairs, it felt like some part of him that had been restless and weighted with guilt and worry was suddenly cut-free and in danger of drifting up and away. The feeling made him smile as he headed toward his bed.

[ ](http://s160.photobucket.com/albums/t192/GoldSnitcher/Fic%20art/Supernatural/?action=view&current=Divisor.jpg)

The next morning, as Sam came down the stairs in pursuit of the lilting smell of fresh coffee, he was more asleep than awake. Last night, Dean’s words, along with a merciless barrage of dark memories had circled in his head until he had more or less fallen asleep from emotional exhaustion.

He pulled a mug from the cupboard and poured the coffee, holding it for a moment and just inhaling before he managed to wake up enough to raise the mug to his lips and take a gulp. That was about the same moment that a giant wolf trotted up the steps of the back porch and through the opened screen door. “ _Jesus Christ_!” Sam said, and was in the process of scrambling for a knife when it occurred to him that in fact, he was aware of a wolf in the neighborhood and it had yet to do anything particularly threatening.

Dean’s bright green eyes blazed as the wolf watched him, nonplussed. Sam felt impossibly foolish. After a moment, the wolf trotted past him and down the hall. Sam was halfway through his mug of coffee when Dean, now in his human form and clad in some of the new clothes he’d picked up when he’d gone into town the other day, stepped into the kitchen and grabbed a mug down from the cupboard. “Jumpy much?”

“Dude,” Sam said. “I don’t care how soft and cuddly werewolves are supposed to be, there is just no way a giant wolf trotting through your home at some ungodly hour is a calming sight, okay?” 

Dean wrinkled his nose as he poured himself a mug of coffee. “Soft and cuddly?” He cast a narrow-eyed glance toward Sam, as he leaned back against the counter, steaming mug in his hands as he said, “I once took down an entire pack of _gwyllion_ by myself! How’s that for soft and cuddly?” He flashed a sharp-toothed grin and took a large mouthful of coffee.

Sam waited for the moment just before Dean swallowed the hot brew to say, “Was your tactic to overpower them with your personal odor? Because I’d believe that.” It was somewhat of a triumph when Dean almost spat-out his mouthful.

“Dude,” Dean said, when he’d managed to swallow the coffee and choke-down the cough that Sam’s comment had startled out of him. “Was that a wet dog joke? Because I’ve heard them all!” He rolled his shoulders and squared off with Sam, every ounce of his expression and body language clearly communicating ‘let’s do this’. 

A sharp lance of heat flashed through him, strong enough to almost make Sam shudder, the reaction so surprising that he found himself choking on the light-hearted tease he had been about to deliver. Dean’s eyes glinted with humor and defiance, more open and clear in that moment than Sam had seen them, and he wanted to reach out, the need to touch instinctual and natural in a way that made him reel-back from the inclination. 

He barely knew Dean; it was too much, too soon. There was no reason why the banter should make his blood run hot with something that was more than simple lust. Dean was attractive, Sam could acknowledge that easily. He was also enjoyable company, but that was no excuse for the startlingly visceral response Sam had just experienced.

“Sam?” Dean asked, the teasing ebbing out of his expression and a frown moving in to take its place.

Sam forced himself to smile and roll his eyes. “I bet I could come-up with a few you haven’t heard yet,” he said, only barely remembering what they had been talking about just a minute ago, his mind preoccupied with sorting through his latest response to the werewolf. “Unfortunately, I have to head into town to pick-up a few things, so you’ll just have to wait to hear them,” he lied, careful to leave a wide birth between him and Dean as he stepped away from the counter and left the kitchen.

“Sure,” Dean’s scoffing voice followed him through the hall. “You say that, but I know you’re just buying time to figure-out some dog-jokes. You can’t fool me.”

Sam paused with his hand on the front door, unable to stop a smile from spreading. The hot-rush of want that had caused him to panic a moment before overtaken by a surge of fondness that somehow made his previous urge to pull Dean into a devouring kiss less startling. “Hey Dean,” he called. “What’s a dog’s favorite hobby?”

Dean stepped into the hallway, leaning against the doorframe. “Collecting fleas,” he answered blandly, taking a sip of coffee from his mug. “Ha, ha.” 

Sam grinned again, and pulled open the door. “I’ll see you in a couple of hours.”

[ ](http://s160.photobucket.com/albums/t192/GoldSnitcher/Fic%20art/Supernatural/?action=view&current=Line4-2.jpg)

It took a little over two weeks, but eventually Dean got everything he needed, including new clothes and a wallet full of the essentials. Sam found himself stepping into the main room, the darkness from outside making it somehow easier to ask, “Where are you going to go?”

“I have no clue,” Dean said. He let out a slow breath. “But that’s nothing new.”

Sam watched from the doorway as Dean packed his belongings into the duffel bag he had bought in town. Bobby had dropped a few subtle hints, and a few not-so subtle ones in the hope that Dean might decide to hang around a bit longer. Dean seemed to be determined to move-on.

“How did you get caught?” Sam asked, after the silence hung between them. “I mean, Gordon mentioned that you were with some hunter named Steve Wandell? How did he find you?” Sam had almost asked, ‘how did he end up buying you’, and had to choke back the words. No matter how accurate they were, he could not bring himself to say it; the reality had been growing steadily more disturbing as he became more used to Dean’s presence.

“Just happened. Bad luck, I guess,” Dean dismissed, his easy posture and dismissive air making Sam suddenly remember what Bobby had told him about werewolves: fiercely protective and surprisingly social, the werewolves who killed were the ones isolated and alone. 

All at once Sam connected Dean’s quiet admittance that there was no one he knew looking for him with the way he had just simply seemed to _understand_ how lost and alone Sam had been feeling since his father had died. The thought began to take root, more convincing the more he thought about it, gaining momentum with little flashes of memory, like the way Dean had taken so quickly to Bobby, practically preening under the older mans attention. Steve Wandell had not captured Dean; Dean had _surrendered_. Anything was better than being driven slowly mad with loneliness, and Dean had no family, no pack, no place where he belonged.

“You know,” Sam said. “You’re more than welcome to come with me tomorrow. I mean, I’ve had about enough of being on my own, and if you’re not sick of hunting, I dunno …”

“I knew there was gonna be a price for all this,” Dean said, his voice oddly flat. “No one’s that helpful without wanting something in return.”

Sam watched the shift in the other man’s posture, the drop in the shoulders as Dean turned his head away, and found himself snapping, “Screw you, man.” Maybe it was harsh or hasty, but they’d been talking, Sam thought they were actually maybe friendly at this point. “You know what I’m saying, don’t pretend you don’t. You want to say ‘no’, that’s fine, but don’t lay it on that Bobby and I are trying to get something from you. That’s bullshit and you know it.” Sam shook his head. “You know what, forget it. It was a stupid thought.”

But when Sam came down the front steps with his duffel slung over his shoulder the next day, Dean was leaning against the Impala, his own bag lying at his feet, talking to Bobby. They fell silent as Sam came to a halt. 

Dean raised his eyebrows and said, somewhat impatiently, “Dude, what’s taking so long? Come on, day’s a wastin’.” 

Bobby was stifling an amused grin as Sam forced himself down the steps. “Why do I have a growing sense that I’m going to regret this?” Sam muttered as he carted his bag to the trunk.

“I heard that, Sammy!” 

Sam glowered at Bobby as the man snickered. “What?” Bobby asked, innocently. “I like him.”

“I love this car,” Dean was saying, hauling his own duffel to the trunk and slinging it casually inside. “You’re going to have to let me drive it sometime, man. Seriously. In fact,” he said, and then stepped right up to Sam and stuck his hand into the pocket of his jacket.

Sam squawked. “What the hell are you doing?” 

“Ah _ha_!” Dean said, yanking the keys from Sam’s pocket and holding them up, jingling them happily. “I’m gonna drive!

“No you’re not!” 

“Sammy, this is a beautiful car. She deserves to stretch her legs on the open road, and you drive like an old lady who can barely see over the steering wheel. It’s tragic, really.”

Sam sputtered. “I don’t drive like that! Gimme my keys back!”

Dean raised his eyebrows, and kept the car keys in his fist. “Seriously, your driving was so pathetic it made me ill.” It was Sam’s turn to raise his eyebrows, but Dean pushed on. “Do you have any idea how shitty it is to feel carsick as a wolf? I didn’t even have any damned hands to roll down the window. It was horrible; I might still suffer from residual trauma from the whole experience. Do you want me to vomit on the rugs? Because I will.” 

“Fine,” Sam said, releasing a heavy, exasperated sigh. “Whatever.” Dean grinned, wide and bright and triumphant, and tossed the keys in the air, catching them happily again as he pivoted and headed toward the driver’s side of the Impala. 

“Residual trauma my ass,” Sam muttered to himself. He paused, one hand on the lid to trunk as he looked down, his duffel making a crooked ‘T’ with Dean’s, it felt like a weight had been lifted off his shoulders. With a grin, Sam closed the trunk.


	3. Chapter 3

They took out a Woman in White in West Texas with two and a half kilograms of salt and a match, and a nest of Chupacabras in Arkansas with a shotgun and a little help from Dean’s were’ form. Sam didn’t even know Chupacrabras could be anything but solitary, even if Dean had been complaining about the stench of them being too thick for one creature. He was standing over one body, the shotgun hot and smoking in his hand when the second lunged at him from behind, and died with Dean’s sharp canines in its neck. By the time they were done there was a small bonfire at the edge of a fallow field and they were both breathing heavy but otherwise unharmed. 

Three months and five hunts later they were traveling east, Dean behind the wheel and singing along, off-key and unabashedly loud, to a CCR cassette he’d picked-up somewhere outside of Franklin, in a shop that sold records, tapes, and novelty T-Shirts, and had a wall of kitchen appliances that supposedly had been used by rock stars. There was a Black Sabbath T-Shirt in Dean’s bag somewhere, and Sam had one that said ‘Eat Your Greens’ all in capitals that he still didn’t quite understand how Dean had talked him into buying.

The music was so loud that Sam didn’t hear his cellphone ring, but Dean turned the volume down and said, “Are you gonna get that?” 

Sam scrambled for his cell, and when he discovered it hadn’t been the source of the call, had to make a grab for the glove compartment where he kept his dad’s phone before the call disconnected. “Hello?”

 _“Is this John Winchester?”_ a tentative female voice on the other end of the line questioned.

Even if he’d been expecting it, hearing someone asking for his dad made Sam cringe internally. He explained the situation in as few words as possible and then asked if he could help, and then had to encourage her to talk when the woman began to re-think her call.

 _“This may sound quite strange,”_ the woman continued, after Sam had persuaded her to explain. _“I knew your father… well, I didn’t know him but … but he helped a friend of mine with a problem she was having…”_

Sam thought she was being overly cryptic, considering she had been the one to call him, but figured he also knew the reason for her hesitancy. “I’m in the same line of work as my dad,” he said.

Her relieved sigh was audible over the line. _“I thought I was crazy to call. When John told Mazy her problem was a poltergeist I didn’t quite believe it. Even when she said all the trouble went away after he helped her. But I think…I think I might believe it now…”_

The woman, Anna Mitchells, was reluctant to give details over the phone, but she was persuasive and Sam figured since they were between hunts, it was worth checking out. Dean shrugged, “We’re heading in that directions anyway.” Sam settled back and Dean cranked the CCR again, and they drove.

[ ](http://s160.photobucket.com/albums/t192/GoldSnitcher/Fic%20art/Supernatural/?action=view&current=Line5.jpg)

Just outside of Bayfield, Wisconsin, in yet another crappy motel room, Sam slung his duffel in a corner and collapsed onto the bed closest to the door. The quiet hiss of the shower filtered into the room through the closed bathroom door. 

Sam had yet to determine if Dean’s habit of showering more or less immediately once they had checked into a room was the result of his hedonistic personality or born out of the three years he had spent confined in his wolf’s form, undoubtedly dependent on lakes and small stretches of water to get clean. Somehow Sam could not imagine Gordon Walker wrangling a full-grown wolf in a tiny motel shower, let alone caring about a wolf enough to give it a bath. 

“I’ll go pick up something to eat,” Sam said, without moving from his sprawled position on the bed, as Dean wandered out from the bathroom to search his own duffel for a fresh change of clothes. 

“Get some pie.” Dean pulled out his shower kit from his bag and slung a towel over his shoulder.

Sam was unable to stop a smile from stretching across his face as he said, “Obviously.” After the time they had spent on the road together, he was more than aware of Dean’s love of pie. Whenever Dean was behind the wheel of the Impala Sam had to resolve himself to periodic detours, sometimes several hours out of the way, for the sake of a little Ma and Pa restaurant that served homemade pie that came highly recommended by the locals. 

“Hey,” Dean said, emerging once more from the bathroom, having removed his T-shirt and belt. He leaned against the doorframe. “I was thinking, after this hunt, d’you think we should swing by Bobby’s?”

For all that he was only with the man for about two weeks, Dean and Bobby had fallen into an easy sort of friendship. The man had actually ruffled Dean’s hair before they’d left, and given him a hug, and though Dean had bitched and growled, he’d been smiling wide and easy as anything. They kept in touch, just like Sam had been doing since before John’s death, checking in and getting advice. Maybe the calls were a little more frequent since Dean had joined him, but nobody seemed to mind, least of all Bobby.

Sam shrugged, most of his focus going into trying to will his tired body to move. “Sure, we’ll swing round,” he said, then tipped his head in Dean’s direction. “Anything particular on your mind?” 

Dean shrugged and disappeared into the bathroom, the obnoxiously bright purple door closing a moment later.

[ ](http://s160.photobucket.com/albums/t192/GoldSnitcher/Fic%20art/Supernatural/?action=view&current=Divisor1.jpg)

Anna Mitchells stood on the front steps of her blue two-story home as they pulled up. Her face looked tired and worn, weighed-down by worry and grief, but she stood tall and greeted them warmly. Sam suspected that they were her last hope, which was all but confirmed as she explained her situation.

Her grandson, Thomas, had gone fishing with a few of his friends. They’d taken tents and canoes and had intended to stay for two weeks, but that time had come and gone and there was no sign of them. The rangers had found the campsite where the boys had been staying, but everything had been destroyed, the tents ripped clear through and shredded, blood streaked across the fabric and striping the ground. The rangers had called off the search, confident it had been a bear attack. 

“I’m so sorry,” Sam said, his voice low and thick. “That’s horrible.”

“Well,” she said, shrugging helplessly, her clasped hands pressed between her knees. “I just don’t believe it was a bear attack.”

Sam shared a look with Dean; he hated the cases that weren’t cases at all. When a grieving family member or friend called him because they needed to believe that there was something that could be done, some sort of mistake that could be righted. “Mrs. Mitchells…” 

“I know animals, Mr. Winchester,” she said, drawing herself up perfectly straight and glaring imperiously at him. “I _know_ bears. This was not a bear.” She stood up and went to a side table, opening a hidden panel and withdrawing a brown manila envelope. From the envelope she pulled a small stack of photographs that she passed to Dean.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” Sam continued. “I truly am. I just don’t see that there is anything we can do.”

“Sam,” Dean said, his tone interrupting him and making Sam pause. Dean handed him the photographs, each one presenting a different angle of the campsite. Sam couldn’t see anything particularly remarkable about the shots except the savagery of the destruction.

“We’ll check it out,” Dean said, his voice steady and smooth and it affected Anna Mitchells like a healing balm, her posture relaxing and her expression softening, even as it made Sam struggle to conceal his confused frown. “We can’t promise you anything, though.”

“I understand,” she said, sounding as if she actually did. “I just want to know what happened out there.”

“What was that about?” Sam asked as they walked back to the Impala. He had the photographs in his hand where Anna Mitchells left them, insisting they might come in useful. 

“What?” Dean was on his way to the driver’s side of the Impala and paused. It was amusing how quickly he had taken to the car, and Sam was more than happy to share the driving, especially when the other man seemed to enjoy being behind the wheel so much. 

Sam pulled the keys from his pocket and chucked them over the hood of the car, smirking as Dean caught them absently and opened the door in a movement so fluid he might as well have pulled the keys from his own pocket. 

“ _We’ll check it out?_ ” Sam mimicked, pulling open his own door and sliding onto the seat. “It’s not a bear?”

Dean started the car and looked over at him. “I doubt it,” he said. “The attack was targeted, only the tent was hit. The rest of the chaos was from the struggle. The kids probably tried to run.”

Sam shrugged, not seeing the problem. “So they brought food into the tent or something.”

“No,” Dean said. “Anna said they were experienced campers, they’d know better. Plus, check out the third photo, you can see the food pack strung up on a tree in the distance.”

Sam shuffled through the photos and noted the yellow pack, small and almost at the edge of the photograph. “Then the bear just wanted them.”

“What is this, _The Ghost and the Darkness_? Bears aren’t man-eaters; mostly they kill when they’re threatened or their cubs are threatened. On very rare occasions they’ll kill a human because food is scarce. Whatever attacked that tent knew what it was after, and it took it. Those kids weren’t killed there.”

“You got all of that from a photograph?” Dean shrugged, and pulled out onto the road. Sam stared at the other man’s profile for a moment and sighed. “So, if not a bear, what?”

“I dunno.” Dean said. “What would be living out in the woods and looking to munch on a bunch of campers?”

Sam frowned as he thought about it. “I’d say a Wendigo, but you don’t usually find them this far north.” He glanced at the other man, whose eyes were suddenly sparkling. “What are you so happy about?”

“Nothing,” Dean said, the edges of his lips twisting upward. He was practically thrumming with anticipation. “Just never hunted one of them before.”

Sam rolled his eyes. “Well, it’s no picnic. Besides, we’re not even sure that’s what it is. We should check out the library, see if there have been any other incidents in the park.”

[ ](http://s160.photobucket.com/albums/t192/GoldSnitcher/Fic%20art/Supernatural/?action=view&current=Divisor.jpg)

A little research had Sam inclined to believe that there was likely a Wendigo lurking somewhere in Saint Croix National Park. The patterns of supposed bear attacks were too consistent to be ignored; long stretches of nothing followed a series of disappearances ranging in violence but never with any bodies left to recover. They packed a bag full of camping necessities, and another bag full of supplies for attacking the thing, as well as some back-up weapons in case it wasn’t what they were anticipating after at all.

“Do you think you can track it?” Sam wondered as they hiked through the woods.

Dean turned around, his eyes flicking open as his head dropped down, his nose no longer tipped into the wind. “What do you think I’m trying to do?” he snipped. “I’ve never hunted one of these things before. I don’t exactly know what I’m looking for. I figure I know what everything that _should_ be living in these woods smells like, I’ll just follow whatever doesn’t smell like what I’m familiar with.”

Sam sighed, wishing Dean had something a little more solid to go on. “Fair enough.” 

They trekked to where Thomas and his friends had camped, and then set out from there, Dean tipping his nose up periodically, scenting the air. Sam couldn’t help cutting glances over at the other man, but mostly he tried to focus on the map he carried, puzzling over any possible places the Wendigo might have made a home for itself.

When the shadows started to lengthen, they set up their tent and rolled out their sleeping bags. Dean made a fire while Sam scratched out Anasazi protection symbols on the ground around their camp. “I wish we’d brought stuff for s’mores,” Dean complained after dinner, poking at the fire to keep it strong.

“You’re a sugar junky.” In the distance, a wolf howled and Sam felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. He tipped his head back and looked at the minute peak of sky he could see between the trees. 

Dean took a long breath of the cool night air. “Nice night to be hunting an ancient psychotic cannibal.” 

Sam grinned and rolled his eyes. “You think we’ll even be able to find him?”

“Sure I do.”

Sam quirked an eyebrow and glanced over to where Dean was leaning back against a gnarled tree root, perfectly cradled by the bark, his eyes closed and head tipped slightly back. “You sound confidant.”

“I am,” Dean said. He squinted open one eye and returned Sam’s gaze. “And do you know why?” Sam shook his head. “Because that’s not a wolf that’s howling.” 

Sam jerked upright as the howl came again, this time quite close to the camp. It was a wolf, he would have bet anything at all that there was a wolf nearby, but there was no way he was going to argue with a werewolf on what was and was not a wolf howl. 

Dean was no longer in his casual slouch, but he was still leaning back against the tree, both eyes open as he asked, “You’re sure those symbols will work, right?”

Sam glanced at the symbols, then back at Dean. “They should.”

“Well, what are we waiting for?” Dean stood up and had reached the edge of the camp before Sam caught hold of his arm and yanked him back. “What the hell?”

“Are you crazy?” Sam hissed. “He’s a better hunter _by far_ at night. He has all the advantages.”

“What,” Dean scoffed. “He can see in the dark? He has a keen sense of smell? _Bring it_.”

“Wendigo are good hunters,” Sam said. “They’re better than good. _Please._ We have to wait until morning.” Dean frowned darkly but he sat back down. 

They were quiet, the orange-red flames ducking and rising, casting enough heat to make both men forget the chill of the night. Sam fell into thoughts of his dad, memories of the first time they had been camping: it had been a hunt, of course. 

“I think I must have been seven years old, and I was already stubborn as hell,” Sam said, drifting into an account of the trip, if only to pass the time. “My dad was a marine. He was tough as hell, and I wanted to be just like him.” His dad had been hunting a couple of black dogs, and Sam was pretty sure the only reason he had been allowed to come was because his dad knew some pretty solid sigils that were very effective when it came to warding off black dogs.

“I knew how to fire a gun and handle a weapon, more or less, but my dad usually left me with a friend, or sometimes on my own, depending on what he was after. This time, though, I was allowed to tag along, so long as I promised to stay in the camp. I don’t know if you’ve hunted black dogs before,” a glance at Dean told Sam all he needed to know. There was a knowing light in those green eyes and a wry grin on his face. “So then you know there’s a lot of waiting followed by the most ridiculously intense three seconds of your life.”

He sort of loved hunting black dogs for that reason. “That night, though,” he continued. “It got really cold. I was already pretty bundled up, and I remember being sort of irritated about that, because I had about four layers on, and there was my dad, in a long-sleeved shirt and a leather jacket, no hat and no gloves, and he wasn’t shivering at all. He kept checking with me, was I okay, did I want to wrap the sleeping back around my shoulders, and I kept saying, ‘No, dad. I’m fine.’ And just being a total brat about it.” 

Dean snickered, and the sound, as well as the memory, made Sam grin. “I insisted on staying up to keep watch the minute I realized my dad didn’t intend to go to sleep. I was a shivering wreck in a matter of hours, and finally my dad put his foot down, and made me sit bundled in the sleeping bag, but by that point it was already too late. God, I’ve never been so sick in my life. My dad ended up having to take me to a friend’s place because I was such a mess. I didn’t even get to see a black dog.”

“Did your dad go back and get them?”

Sam huffed a laugh. “Yeah, he went back after he dropped me off. When I found out, I was so furious. I yelled at him. He said, next time if I wanted to go on a hunt with him, I should listen when he told me to dress warmer.”

“I bet that went over well.”

Sam rolled his eyes. “That was pretty much my relationship with my dad, right there. I think we were too much alike to be able to ever actually get along.” The day they’d gone after the demon, they’d butted heads. Hindsight made it look trivial, but Sam could remember that at the time, it had seemed like the most important thing in the world, that his dad acknowledge him as an adult who could make his own decision, who didn’t need to be issued orders and expected to fall in line like a soldier.

“The older I got, the worse it got,” he said. “I think he gave me the car just to get some peace and quiet. Figured if I went off on my own and started hunting, maybe we wouldn’t fight so much. Not that it helped. He had me check-in so damned often it was almost worse than when we were hunting together.”

Dean shrugged. “Parents like to worry.”

Sam snorted. “He didn’t like to worry. He liked to order me around.” Except, maybe that wasn’t exactly fair. “I think, after my mom, he was scared that something would happen to me.” Dean’s raised eyebrow eloquently read ‘I told you so’, and Sam threw a pebble in his general direction. “What teen wants to be told what to do? Especially after all the training he put me through. I kept saying, ‘let me go, I know what I’m doing, I can do it by myself’, and the one time he stepped back, I go and get him killed.”

Above them, the wind made the leaves dance and hiss. Sam sat listening to the sounds of the forest, Somewhere on the log he was using as a backrest, a cricket was chirruping in stuttering whirs.

“One of the first things he taught me,” Sam said, pushing away the echo of that memory, “was that it was good luck to hunt by a full moon. I think I was about four, so that’s how he explained to me. When I was older, he gave me something more concrete.”

“Which was what?”

“That supernatural creatures are a lot like any other kind of creature. They’re usually not too active during the day, they prefer the dark, the night. But something about the full moon makes them even more active than usual. If you hunt during a full moon, you’re pretty much guaranteed to bump into something.” 

They lapsed into silence again, comfortable, filled with the sounds of the forest at night. “I was born under a full moon,” Dean said. 

Sam glanced across the fire at the other man, then followed Dean’s gaze up to a gap of night sky visible between the high shifting canopy of trees. There was a full moon sitting above them, bright and white, so round and huge it felt like it would fall out of the sky at any moment.

Sam dropped his gaze when he felt Dean’s eyes on him. After a moment, Dean’s eyes dropped back to the fire. “Do you know they call the full moon in January the Wolf Moon?” Sam shook his head. “Native Americans had different names for all the full moons. But January is the Wolf Moon, because the hungry wolves would gather outside their villages and howl.” Dean flashed a wry smirk at Sam, “Fitting, don’t you think? That was the moon I was born under.”

Sam watched as Dean wiped his hand down his face, his head turned away as he gazed up at the night sky and the heavy moon suspended above them. “I didn’t even know we were different. Most of the village was pack. The things the elders would tell us, about being careful no one saw us shift, keeping things secret, it was like a game. We were pretty sheltered, I didn’t know much about what it meant to be a werewolf until the hunters came.” 

His eyes flickered over to Sam, and Sam felt suddenly as if he should apologize for what he was, for how he had been raised and what he had become, but then Dean’s gaze drifted away and Sam forced himself to keep silent and listen. 

“Our house was on the outskirts of the town, in the forest, near a river just deep enough that it was always singing, even when it got cold. It was beautiful, but I suppose it wasn’t the safest place. Not like further in town where the houses were closer together. 

“I was four when they came. I don’t think it even occurred to them that there would be so many wolves in one place; I think that must have been why they panicked. It wasn’t a full moon, and my parents were always so careful anyway, I still don’t understand how the hunters could have known; but I suppose all that matters is that they did.

“I remember the heat and the smell of the fire. My grandmother got me from my room where I’d been sleeping. She took me downstairs; pulled open a hidden door beneath the floorboards of the living room that I hadn’t even known existed and hugged. She kissed my forehead and she said, ‘Run, Dean.’ She made me promise never to look back, and she gave me her necklace. Then she closed the passage and everything was dark, but I did what she told me to and I ran as fast as I could, and I never looked back.”

Sam swallowed thickly, tried to fight the roil of emotions inside of him. He’d been hearing tragic stories for as long as he’d been hunting, it was part of the job. He sympathized with every new story he heard, but Dean’s story was different, it felt different, somehow, maybe just because it was Dean’s. 

It took him a moment, but when he was certain his voice would be steady he asked, “Did the hunters take out the whole pack?”

Dean shook his head. “No. They shot my parents and some of the others. They destroyed a fair portion of the town, not all of the houses they burned belonged to werewolves, but they did kill a lot of the pack. The rest of the town thought it was a forest fire; it was a dry autumn, and I suppose they had no reason to suspect anything different.” He shrugged. “That’s the story the sheriff had to offer and it was as good as any, I guess.”

He poked at the fire until it leapt up higher. “The pack alpha took me in and raised me. He tried to explain about werewolves, why the hunters would be scared of us. He talked to me about my parents a lot, too. He wanted me to stay with the pack when I came of age, but nothing felt the same. How could it? I left when I was sixteen, and I never went back.”

Sam couldn’t think of anything to say, but as he sat there, thinking about his own dad and the night John had been killed, he thought, maybe he didn’t need to. Dean wasn’t telling him about his past because he wanted to hear inadequate condolences or that he wanted to wallow. He trusted Sam with the story because he wanted to show that he understood. The isolation and impossible loneliness that came in the wake of losing his dad, of realizing that he had no family left alive; Dean knew it too. 

It hurt, and it threatened to shake everything apart, but it wasn’t all consuming. Not if he didn’t want it to be. Sam thought of Bobby and his phone calls that somehow always managed to come when Sam was feeling so very alone. Of Dean, hedonistic, pie-loving Dean who’d run through a burning wood and never looked back because his grandmother had begged him not to. Sam didn’t want the grief to devour him. He didn’t want to be swallowed in the hunt. He didn’t want to be like his dad. 

In the shadows by the camp, the Wendigo’s wolf howl echoed.

[ ](http://s160.photobucket.com/albums/t192/GoldSnitcher/Fic%20art/Supernatural/?action=view&current=Divisor1.jpg)

They were up with the first rays of the sun, an unsatisfying and bland breakfast washed down with too-strong coffee cooked over the fire they’d taken turns nursing all night. Sam took down the tent as Dean cleaned up the dishes and re-packed their bags.

The wendigo had stayed close through the night and Sam had kept his flare gun close to hand, even though the protective markings he’d etched around the camp seemed to be doing their job. Wendigos could be killed by fire, and after a bit of argument regarding method, they’d settled on the flares, trusting that a relatively controlled burst was a better bet, considering they’d be in the middle of the woods and it hadn’t been raining so much in the passed week.

“This way,” Dean said, after pausing for a moment to scent the air. Sam nodded and fell into step silently, his ears straining. 

They were walking in the opposite direction from the rocky outcrop that the map indicated housed a series of caves. Sam had assumed the wendigo would prefer to make its layer in one of those caves because of the added security they offered. Not that he was an expert when it came to wendigos. He’d only hunted one before, and it wasn’t as if there was that many in existence. The last one had lived in a cave, but that might have been because it was Arizona, and the only other option was on the side of a cliff. Maybe preferred living conditions varied from one wendigo to the other.

They cut a zigzagging path through the brush, Dean periodically tipping his head back, his nose tilting up into the air. “Is that a track?” Sam said, slowing his steps as he pointed out the way the grass just ahead seemed dull.

Dean bent down to peer at it, but quickly dismissed it. “It’s old.”

Sam caught a closer look at it as he passed and thought that, no, it was not such a very old track at all. He cast a look at Dean, but the other man was paused up ahead, his eyebrow raised expectantly like he was waiting for Sam to catch-up.

When Sam fell back into step with him, Dean started up a steady monologue that started with an account of his first shift, when the fullness of the moon compelled the change and he’d raced through the woods and it had taken the elders three days to convince him to return to his human shape. Most of the stories, Sam realized, involved the forest, or camping, so Dean must have figured they were relevant or on-topic, despite being in the middle of a hunt and very much in danger. 

By the time Sam realized Dean was picking his way, slowly and circuitously, to the lookout point that one of the rangers had spoken of the other day, when Sam and Dean had been getting their pass into the park. The vague suspicion he had been harboring began to solidify, and Sam found himself picking his way with greater confidence.

The trees began to thin somewhat, and to the right, there was a steady, though smooth incline, and when he was more or less satisfied with the flatness of the terrain, Sam called a halt so he could fish his water from the backpack and Dean tipped his head to the left where the ground sloped upward. “I’m gonna check that ridge over there, see what I can see.” 

Sam frowned. “Don’t wander off too far. And if you taken and eaten alive, try to leave a bread crumb trail or something.”

Dean rolled his eyes. “There won’t be any need for you to play Gretel to my Hansel. The thing’s far away.” 

Grabbing up a bottle of water, Sam tipped his body gratefully against a tree trunk and took a long sip, allowing himself a moment of rest. “Sam!” Dean called, and Sam jerked his head up.

“What?” He was already re-capping the bottle and stuffing it back into his bag.

“You gotta check this out!”

Sam rolled his eyes as he started walking, his arms worming the backpack into place. “This better be good,” he muttered, only to be slammed sideways and have the breath knocked out of him. 

A gaunt, sallow figure loomed above him, its body stretched and skin leached of color like a rotted fish. It snarled, a warm puff of rancid breath across Sam’s face, as he lay there, back bowed awkwardly over his backpack, with food containers digging sharply into his spine. Sam twisted his arm round, tried to pull the gun from where it was tucked into his jeans but the weight of the wendigo kept him pinned. 

Its mouth drew uncomfortably close and Sam flailed for the gun, hoping to dislodge the creature just enough so he could reach that little bit further. Then the creature’s body jerked sideways, leaving room for Sam to curse and scramble up, freeing his arms from his heavy pack as he grabbed for the flare gun. 

The thing was hissing and issuing a shrill screaming keen as it wriggled and kicked, but Dean more or less had it pinned, the wendigo’s mouth held firmly between long canine teeth. “I can’t shoot it like that,” Sam said, trying to find an opening that didn’t put Dean at risk. Dean shifted and growled a warning, and Sam braced himself, aiming the flair and holding perfectly still, waiting. 

The second Dean released his grip the wendigo was a blur of motion, vaulting to its feet and rushing to climb the nearest tree. Dean bit down on the closest part of the thing he could reach, a flailing foot. Sam fired, and the thing dropped back to the ground in a flaming, convulsing mass before crumbling up into dust.

Sam spent a few moments panting, wiping the hand that still clutched the flare gun across his mouth in case the wendigo had managed to drool on him. He cast a narrow-eyed look toward the wolf. “Did you know the whole time that he was following us?”

_“The scent markers I was following the other day were all messed up. He must have realized how we were able to track him. What with the little show he gave us last night, I figured he would take the bait if we walked on by; less chance anyone else might get hurt, in case he has kept someone alive.”_

Sam nodded and then tucked the flare gun into his pack, which he drew back onto his shoulders. The wolf followed as he crested the ridge that Dean had disappeared over, supposedly to see if there was a suitable lookout. 

As it turned out, there was quite a view from the little rocky ledge, but Sam barely noted it as he gathered up Dean’s clothes that were strewn in contained chaos across the dirt. The wolf sat and watched the process. _“How did you know?”_ Dean asked. _“That it was coming, I mean.”_

Sam snorted. “You were monologuing the whole way,” Sam said wryly. “Story after story about being in the woods, tracking things, hunting things. Plus we were heading in the opposite direction from the most likely place for the thing to establish a lair. I assumed you were trying to tell me something. Trap’s not much good if you sit down and lay it all out within earshot of the thing you’re trying to bait. I figured I’d just follow your lead for a while.” Sam shrugged. “Separating? Going to check out a view? Yeah, I knew something was up.” 

“Are you gonna change back?” he asked, after a moment. The wolf seemed to consider the question before indicating that he would prefer to revert his human form, so Sam dropped the pile of clothes he’d collected by a tree whose branches were hanging low enough to offer a bit of privacy. “I’ll give you a moment, then.”

It didn’t take long before Dean, fully dressed and shouldering into his own pack, stepped back into view. “Okay, let’s check out those caves. They’re definitely where that thing was living. The stench was overpoweringly strong that way.”

The tromp back was quiet and Sam tried to brace himself for what he was likely to find. For all the horror stories he had heard from hunters about taking down a wendigo, it had been simple enough with only himself and Dean. He hoped their luck would hold just a little longer, and they’d find only survivors when they reach the lair.

His hopes fell when they reached the cave, the outside of which was decorated by bleached bones they had to pick their way through. Inside, a recent kill waited for them, blood and flesh scattered in a circle around a cavern of ribcage. 

“Come on,” Dean said, with his nose tucked into his raised elbow trying to block out the smell, as they pressed further inward. “That’s not all the bodies.”

The cave opened up into a large chamber, where four more bodies were hanging from hooks, like pork slung-up in a walk in freezer. Sam grimaced and made a mental tally – all the missing staff and campers accounted for, then his eyes widened: one was breathing, his chest slowly rising and falling despite the wide gash across his belly.

“Holy shit,” Dean said, already climbing up to work the chains loose on one of the bodies. Three of the four, two boys and a girl were alive. The last had been bled to death, but it was better than Sam had been expecting.

“You’re okay, dude,” Dean was saying, as he helped the last kid down. “You’re safe. What’s your name?”

“Thomas Mitchells,” he said. “I can’t believe it. I didn’t think I’d make it. I didn’t think any of us would survive.” Dean was flashing a wide grin over at Sam, and Sam couldn’t bite down on a bubbling laugh, the rush of adrenaline and the success of a hunt finished and with survivors no less, filling him up.

[ ](http://s160.photobucket.com/albums/t192/GoldSnitcher/Fic%20art/Supernatural/?action=view&current=Divisor.jpg)

“Dude,” Dean said, his grin wide and pleased as he followed Sam down the steps. “She gave us pie.”

“Yes, Dean,” Sam said, long-sufferingly. “She did give us pie.”

“This is awesome. I love this. No one ever gave me pie when I hunted before.” Sam knew Dean said ‘before’ and meant, with Gordon. Walker hadn’t seemed a terribly pleasant hunter in Sam’s opinion, and he doubted that the man ever attempted to play a sympathetic or even remotely compassionate role when he interviewed any person about a hunt. 

Even if Gordon had been the sort of person to inspire a sense of gratitude in anyone he helped, Sam didn’t really have the heart to tell Dean that no one was likely to give a wolf a fresh baked pie.

“I got a biscuit once,” Dean was saying. “A dog biscuit,” he wrinkled his nose. “Let me tell you, it’s not the same.”

Sam chuckled as he slid behind the wheel of the Impala, glancing over at Dean who was still clutching the apple pie like it was some sort of treasure. Dean glanced over. “I guess you’re not much of a pie man.”

“Pie’s fine,” Sam said.

“ _Fine_?” Dean snorted, like Sam’s utter lack of enthusiasm when it came to all things pie-related was somehow sacrilegious. “Maybe you would have preferred something else,” Dean said, his voice gone sly and teasing and Sam prepared himself for whatever might come next. “Bet Thomas Mitchells could have come up with a way to say thank-you that you might have enjoyed.”

“What?” Sam squeaked, his voice rising embarrassingly high as the statement, despite his attempt at mental preparation, took him completely by surprise.

“He sure had the hots for you, Sammy,” Dean continued, teasing. “I could smell it all over him.”

“You can _smell_ that?” Sam asked, his voice going somewhat shrill. He cleared his throat and said, “Seriously?”

“Dude,” Dean said, his left eyebrow quirking upward as he cast a lingering look Sam’s way. “You’d be surprised.” Sam turned over the engine and concentrated very hard on pulling out into traffic, trying to ignore the sudden hotness in his cheeks that he knew meant he was flushed.

[ ](http://s160.photobucket.com/albums/t192/GoldSnitcher/Fic%20art/Supernatural/?action=view&current=Divisor.jpg)

Sam should have been prepared, because it wasn’t as if Dean hadn’t given him fair warning. Still, he wasn’t expecting to be slammed against their motel room door as soon as he’d pushed it closed. Dean pressed his body along Sam’s side and buried his nose into Sam’s collarbone, breathing deep. “I can smell you too, you know.”

Sam’s eyes dropped closed as he took a steadying breath. “Dean.”

Dean grinned, victory and amusement lighting his eyes. “It’s not like you haven’t been watching me, either. Ever since I shifted at Bobby’s.” His warm breath puffed over Sam’s neck and Sam could feel Dean’s lips ghosting, open mouthed and barely there, across his skin. “Come on, Sammy. I know you want it.”

“I don’t…” Sam choked down his words and turned his face away, his jaw flexing as he did his best to keep his body still as Dean rolled his hips into him.

“What?” 

“I’m not using you,” Sam insisted. “I’m not like _them_. I’m not doing that.”

Dean stepped back and frowned. “Who said anything about using me?”

“You wouldn’t be offering otherwise,” Sam said, his brows pinching together as he tried to put his thoughts together into words that could actually convey some sort of meaning. “I mean all of this, why you went with me when we left Bobby’s, the hunting. Tell me that hasn’t been at least a little bit because you feel obligated.”

“I thought you said you didn’t expect some sort of repayment.”

“I don’t!”

Dean shrugged. “Then why should I feel obligated? I’m not some chick feeling all pressured into putting out. If I didn’t want to be here, I’d leave.” Sam could sense that it was true, too. “I was hunting before I ever ran into Wandell, and I’d be hunting without you. Don’t overcomplicate things.”

“I just,” Sam sighed. “I feel like I’d be taking advantage.”

Dean grinned, a shrewd, wolfish expression. “Of what?”

“Of you!” 

“You didn’t force me to come with you. I’m charm-free, compulsion-free and collar-free. Anything I’m doing is because I want it, so go right ahead Sam,” he said, his voice suddenly dropping low and rough, his pupils blown wide as he stepped closer again and added, “Take advantage.” 

Sam gave up and gave in, his hands reaching up to grip either side of Dean’s head and draw him in for a wet, hard kiss, letting all the heat and excitement and the sheer _want_ that he’d been fighting ever since he’d seen Dean savor a piece of bacon, pour into Dean’s mouth. His kiss was a challenge, demanding with a scrape of teeth, ‘I want this and more’, a flick of tongue asking ‘are you sure? Last chance’, and always Dean pressed back just as hard, like he wanted it as much as Sam did, like he’d been thinking about it just as long. 

They staggered backwards toward the bed, their hands pulling off jackets and the button-down shirts they’d each been wearing, kicking off shoes and socks as they moved. Dean growled as they toppled down onto the covers, nipping at Sam’s thumb as he ghosted it over his lips. “We could have been doing this months ago,” he said, voice breathless. “You and your goddamned sense of propriety.”

“My what?” Sam asked breathily, but his mind had already moved ahead, attached Dean’s words to thousands of images: Dean pulling off his shirt under the warmth of the sun, leaning over the Impala his body unnecessarily pressed close to Sam’s, the devilish sideways glances he always flashed Sam’s way when he downed a beer like he was thinking of wrapping his lips around something else. “You fucking tease.”

“It’s not a tease if you intend to follow-through,” Dean said, looking up from beneath his lashes. “I kept waiting for you to make a move, but you’re such a damned prude, I finally figured if I didn’t do something we’d be waiting forever.”

“Dean,” Sam said, his tongue laving down the other man’s throat before he sucked a bruised into Dean’s freckled skin. “Shut up.” Dean grinned, then gripped the back of Sam’s T-shirt, jerking it up and over Sam’s head, leaving him no choice but to raise his arms and let the shirt be worked off his body. 

Dean tossed it away and moved onto Sam’s jeans, pulling open his belt before nudging the jeans and the boxers underneath down the curve of Sam’s ass. Sam smirked at the other man’s heavy-lidded expression, his fingers worked Dean’s belt loose as he dropped his mouth Dean’s hip, lingering only momentarily before turning his attention to tugging Dean free of his shirt, licking and nipping at every inch of exposed flesh he discovered. 

“I didn’t think you wanted this,” he found himself saying, between bites. “You flirted with enough waitresses along the way.”

“Flirting’s one thing,” Dean panted. “Fucking’s another.”

Sam dropped the T-shirt off the edge of the bed and started working Dean free of his jeans. “S’that what we’re doing?” he wondered as the jeans and boxer-briefs went the same way as the rest of their clothes.

A hand fisted gently in his hair, and Sam followed it up until he was looking into Dean’s eyes. “Sam,” Dean said. “Shut up.” He kissed fiercely, and Sam felt like he was devouring and being devoured, their touches more than a little desperate and hungry. 

It made him think of the wolf he had seen early that day, lunging and snarling, growling low and deep in its throat and sounding not unlike Dean did right then, as Sam shifted down the lean stretch of Dean’s body and took him into his mouth in a single movement. 

“Sam,” Dean murmured. “Sam.” His hands laced in Sam’s hair, not holding him down or forcing his movement, but resting there warm and reassuring, and Sam sucked a little harder, his own hips pressing down into the mattress until suddenly Dean’s grip changed, passing out of Sam’s peripheral vision as it groped in the direction of the nightstand.

“You sure about this?” Dean asked a moment later, he grunted as Sam sucked harder again and then pulled back to work his cock with his tongue. “Last chance to change your mind, Sammy.”

“I hate it when you call me that.” 

Dean grinned, tipped his head back until all Sam could see was the broad curve of his mouth, the bright flash of Dean’s teeth as he smiled. “You love it.” Which was embarrassingly true, the nickname that had haunted him since he was a kid somehow sounding entirely different when it fell from Dean’s lips.

Dean silenced any retort he might have made as he tightened his legs around Sam’s side and grabbed hold of his upper arms, and suddenly Sam found himself on his back, pinned beneath Dean’s body. 

“Jesus,” Sam said, a bolt of lust hitting him at the maneuver. Dean dropped the bottle of lubricant he had retrieved from the nightstand Sam’s his chest, quirking up an eyebrow, and Sam swallowed hard. “Yeah,” he said. “Hell yeah.”

He watched as Dean shifted away and knelt up, one hand flipping the tube of slick open and spilling it into the other, then his hand disappeared behind him and Sam groaned. “Let me,” he said. “Come on, Dean, let me.” 

Dean didn’t listen, instead dropping forward to press his mouth against Sam’s, his tongue working into Sam’s mouth the same way his fingers moved into his own ass. Sam could feel the way he rolled his hips in time with the stretch. He tried to get a grip on the lubricant, wanting nothing more than to work his own fingers into Dean, but the other man pushed it out of reach and, a moment later, knelt up again, shifting forward.

Sam dropped a hand to the sharp jut of Dean’s hip just as he realized what Dean was about to do, and then Dean was sinking down onto his cock, the tight-hot-heat circling him and swallowing him down. Sam’s eyes dropped closed and his head tipped back and he moaned low and broken as Dean rolled his hips first one way, and then the other, picking up a rhythm that was tortuously slow. 

“Harder,” Sam begged. “Please.” But Dean was as much of a contrary bastard in bed as he was outside of it and only jerked his hips in tiny movements that had Sam biting his lip so hard it bled, pausing every once in a while so that Sam was almost completely unsheathed before sinking down oh so slowly and taking him down to the quick. Dean’s eyes were heavy lidded and his mouth was quirked up in the corner, he didn’t bend forward when Sam sought a kiss, just rocked maddeningly above him, driving Sam into pleasurable agony. 

“You sonofabitch,” Sam snarled, wrapping his hand around Dean’s wrist. “Don’t you dare go easy on me.” Dean blinked open his eyes and met his gaze, the movements of his hip stuttering, he glanced at the hand he held braced against Sam’s sternum, at Sam’s fingers wrapped around Dean’s wrist. 

Caught up in the open and surprisingly vulnerable expression on the other man’s face, Sam found a growl rumbling up from somewhere deep inside of him. His desperation overpowered any reluctance or hesitation he might have had and he rolled Dean under him, pressed him down hard, one hand drawing Dean’s leg up, pressing it around his waist. “You want me to let go, Dean?” he asked as he sucked a bruise into Dean’s throat. “You first.”

He set a new pace, a slow withdrawal and hard push that had Dean tipping his head back, his mouth open as he gasped. His hands gripped Sam’s shoulder, then his nails scraped down his back, an aching burn from shoulder to the round of his ass that had Sam thrusting in hard. 

Dean was right – it was fucking, and it was teeth and nails too, with fierce kisses that were deep and unrelenting. Sam was sweat-soaked and praying for release and for it to never end, and when he wrapped a hand around Dean’s cock the other man bowed like lightning, a broken shout slipping from his mouth as he came, clenching down around Sam so hard that he shattered too, his vision going black, his body slumping forward, every part of him sated.

[ ](http://s160.photobucket.com/albums/t192/GoldSnitcher/Fic%20art/Supernatural/?action=view&current=Divisor1.jpg)

Sam opened his eyes some time just before morning and realized with a flush of embarrassment that they had left the blinds open. They were in a corner room at the end of the second floor balcony of the motel, but he still hoped no one had taken it into their head to walk by; they certainly would have gotten an eyeful. “Where’re you going?” Dean murmured, sleep-heavy and bleary.

“Just closing the blinds.” He slid out from under the covers, stopping by the window as the tentative grey of morning cast enough light to see Dean sprawled on the bed, his lashes fanned against his cheeks, features smooth and relaxed in easy sleep. 

He was beautiful, and Sam didn’t mind thinking it. A giddy, happy thrum went through him - Dean was his somehow, and maybe it had taken longer than it had needed to, and maybe Sam had spent more time worrying than the situation apparently warranted, but he didn’t care. 

He let the blinds drop, shutting out the light and staggered back to bed, sliding beneath the covers until his body was pressed, back-to-chest, with Dean, his arm snaking out to press Dean closer still. Dean hummed in sleepy satisfaction without bothering to wake up, and Sam let his eyes fall closed, breathed in the scent of them, still hanging heavy in the air, and went back to sleep.

[ ](http://s160.photobucket.com/albums/t192/GoldSnitcher/Fic%20art/Supernatural/?action=view&current=Divisor.jpg)

By mutual, though unspoken, agreement they by-passed South Dakota. Dean found a hunt in Illinois, and they pulled onto the road and for the most part, it was like nothing had changed. 

They fell into it so easily that Sam felt almost awkward about it, wondering if they shouldn’t have some sort of talk. He was happy with the sex, and he was happy with the hunting and the companionship, but sex was notorious for making things complicated, and Sam wondered if maybe he should make certain he hadn’t put an expiration date on whatever they’d had before as a result. He couldn’t imagine parting ways with Dean; didn’t want to think about returning to hunting on his own. The trouble was that Sam wanted Dean to himself, wanted them to be exclusive, and he wasn’t sure if Dean was wholly on board with that, if maybe the other man wouldn’t consider it too much too soon, or too much at all.

“So how do you kill a ghoul,” Dean said, looking up from the text he’d been reading. “Hey, what are you, asleep or something?”

“Naw, I’m listening,” Sam said, pushing his other thoughts away to focus on the hunt. “Ghouls are immune to holy water and silver. The only thing that kills them is decapitation.”

“Lovely,” Dean said, gagging both visibly and audibly. “So lets go decapitate this son-of-a-bitch.”

Sam smiled at the other man’s enthusiasm, and then hid it quickly, feeling like some sort of stroppy heroine. He fixed a slight frown on his face instead, hoping that Dean hadn’t noticed. “We sure that Samantha Little is a ghoul?”

Dean shot him an utterly bland expression. “If you’d smelled her, you wouldn’t ask such a stupid question.”

Sam raised his hands up. “Okay, but just so you know, they tend to stick together, which means it’s unlikely that there’s just the one.”

There were, in fact, four. Dean took down the ghoul masquerading as Samantha Little, and Sam killed the one that tried to eat Dean as a result. Then they both had to turn and run when a third one dropped down on them from above, where it had been hanging from a chandelier. 

Sam got to listen to Dean rant about how absolutely absurd the hunt was turning out to be as they ran from both the third ghoul and the fourth, who was armed with a freaking cordless reciprocating saw, the sight of which had initially made them laugh. They’d quickly changed their tune.

“I hate ghouls,” Dean said as they ducked down an alley.

“Come here.” Sam dragged him behind a dumpster, their back pressed against the cool green metal as they listened, the steady whir of the saw growing louder as the ghouls approached. 

“He reeks,” Dean whispered.

“Be quiet.” 

They waited and the whir got louder. Dean nudged Sam in the side and raised an eyebrow, and Sam stepped out from behind the dumpster and swung his machete in a clean arch, whisking the ghoul’s head clean off. 

The last ghoul snarled and leaped forward, and Sam readied himself to swing his blade again when the sound of a gunshot ripped through quiet. Sam found himself falling sideways as Dean yanked him solidly back behind the dumpster. 

“Who the fuck is shooting?” Dean hissed.

“I don’t know, I couldn’t see,” Sam said, shifting so he was tucked closer to the metal and the wall, the movement shoving Dean further against the brick wall, out of the range of fire. “Thanks, by the way.”

“Don’t mention it. Seriously.” Dean peaked up over the lip of the trashcan and a bullet thumped into the metal. 

Sam let out a breath. “Okay, they’re definitely trying to hit us.”

“Ya _think_?” Dean muttered, rubbing a hand through his hair and down his neck, undoubtedly checking to see if the bullet had grazed him and he simply hadn’t noticed. 

Sam set his machete aside, pulling his own gun from his jeans and resting his thumb against the safety. “Who have we pissed off lately?”

Dean raised his eyebrows and shrugged. “In the mid-town area?”

Sam rolled his eyes, shifting closer to toward the alley so he could peak out, looking in the direction he’d estimated the shots must have come from. From the third level of the parking garage that fronted on the alley, Sam saw a familiar figure heft his gun and take another shot. Sam ducked back behind their cover. “Shit, it’s Gordon Walker.”

“Gordon?” Dean looked more than a little surprised at the news. 

“How did you not smell him?”

“Have I mentioned lately that ghouls _stink_?” 

“What the fuck do we do?” Sam said, tipping his head back against the green metal. “He’s _shooting_ at us. I didn’t think he was that crazy.”

Dean shot him a wry look. “The dude is a sadistic sonofabitch, and you didn’t think he was crazy enough to try to _kill_ us?” 

Sam shrugged because, yeah, he really hadn’t considered it that way. Now they were pinned down in the middle of an alley, and the man was armed and firing on them. Any of the ideas he was coming up with about escape put them at too high a risk of being shot to be worth it. Sam briefly considered if it might be best to wait until Gordon ran out of bullets, but the man likely had more guns with him than the one he was currently firing at them. Hell, he was probably hunkered down right by the trunk of his car, which meant he had an entire arsenal at his disposal, and Sam had only his own 9mm and no extra bullets. He and Dean both had their machetes, but Sam didn’t want it to come to that. 

They were screwed.

Dean flipped his machete around in his hand and let out a breath. “Okay, so, who do you think Gordon wants to kill more, you or me?”

“No offense,” Sam said. “But I’m not entirely sure he’d know who you are. You’re a little less hairy than the last time he saw you.”

Dean nodded. “Well, that settles it. I’ll draw him off and you get out of here. I’ll meet you back at the motel.”

“Are you _crazy_ , that’s not…” but Dean was out and running, swiping the head of the ghoul who had been stumbling around a little confused clean off its shoulders, and then hopping up onto the railing of the first floor of the parking garage in a single bound, and from there disappearing inside, all the while Gordon firing shots but never hitting home. Sam didn’t wait to see what happened next. He turned around and ran.

[ ](http://s160.photobucket.com/albums/t192/GoldSnitcher/Fic%20art/Supernatural/?action=view&current=Divisor1.jpg)

Sam was on Dean as soon as he walked through the door, his hands running over him and confirming what his eyes had already told him: that the man was unhurt. “You’re insane,” Sam snarled, his voice low and hoarse. “What were thinking, taking off like that?”

“That I’m faster than you, and Gordon had less of a reason to shoot me.” Dean pulled of his jacket and removed the holster that held his machete off, dropping it onto table.

“I can’t believe you’d do something so stupid.”

“Don’t yell at me just because you didn’t think of it first,” Dean said. Sam flexed his jaw and clenched his fists. “The question is, what the hell does Gordon want?”

“Apparently,” Sam said. “He wants to _shoot_ someone.” Dean rolled his eyes and headed further into the room, but Sam caught hold of his shirt and dragged him back. “Don’t do that again.”

“Yeah, whatever.” Sam slammed him back when he tried to move off, but Dean’s expression was as calm and as inflexible as steel. “I’m not making a promise I don’t intend to keep. Bottom line, I _am_ faster, Sam. We were pinned and you know it. If I needed to, I could have turned wolf and gotten away even quicker. Whatever the hell this is, stow it. I’m not in the mood.” He pushed Sam off and paced away.

“I don’t want you getting hurt because of me.” Dean stopped abruptly at the words, and turned somewhat wide eyes to him. Sam forced himself to continue. “I don’t want you getting hurt at all.” 

He wondered if Dean could hear all the things he meant and couldn’t say, and thought that maybe he could, because Dean stepped forward and kissed him, soft at first, and then bruising. “No,” Sam said, bracing a hand gently against his chest. “It’s fine, I’m just saying…”

“You want to hug it out or something?” 

Sam realized that his whole body was thrumming. The adrenaline of the hunt merging with the full-on terror that Dean was going to get shot right in front of him, made all the worse by Dean bullheadedly running out into the line of fire. It felt good to have the man in his arms, felt right and took the edge off. Maybe a hug would have settled him too, but this was better. He lowered his mouth to Dean’s and closed his eyes.

They were standing a few paces from the door, their arms around each other, their hands smoothing over thin cotton shirts, pressing against skin, ruffling hair; angling heads, sparring tongues and exchanged breath, slow and staggering. Sam’s heart stutter-stopping as his mind thought _‘Dean Dean Dean’_ and not much else.

They were half naked and caught-up in each other, Sam lowering Dean down and crawling on top of him. Dean blinked open too-green eyes and smiled a little, rested a hand against the side of Sam’s neck. Sam traced his fingers along Dean’s collarbone, pressed a kiss to a bruise already darkening the skin from a lucky hit courtesy of one of the ghouls and meant, _‘I just want to keep you safe’_.

Their tongues mapped new territory, remapped old, ghosting teeth across heated flesh. Sam thought, _‘I love you, you crazy bastard’_ and held on that much harder, feeling the press of Dean’s fingers into his own arms as the other man tried to keep them pressed together.

He pushed into Dean liked he was coming home; their breath mixing, their moans shared between them. Dean reached an arm back to pull him close. Sam’s forward thrust tipped Dean’s top leg forward a little more, and it meant _‘Don’t leave me’_. He traced his teeth along the edge of Dean’s jaw as Dean’s eyes fell closed; a long slow breath: _‘Yes, there, perfect. Don’t stop.’_

Dean’s eyes squeezed shut, his nose wrinkling as his mouth fell open, too breathless to scream as the pleasure swallowed him down, ate him up, devoured him. Sam dropped his head to the back of Dean’s neck and held on, rode it out with gasps and groans, his hand on Dean’s hip, barely gripping, the forward-back thrust of it stuttering as his own eyes dropped closed. 

He moaned, a hiccupping, gasping breathy sound as his hand tightened on Dean’s hip, five distinct marks against pale skin: _‘Mine.’_

[ ](http://s160.photobucket.com/albums/t192/GoldSnitcher/Fic%20art/Supernatural/?action=view&current=Divisor.jpg)

If Sam had been a little less caught-up in his memories of the previous night he might have been a little smarter about it. Either way, he’d been optimistic, fucked-out and screwed-senseless and he’d grabbed his wallet that morning intent on picking up breakfast, finding himself looking forward to the rant Dean could be trusted to give about being ‘girlie’, delivered, undoubtedly, whilst simultaneously devouring the very breakfast he was insulting.

They’d never addressed the issue of Gordon, though, and Sam knew the other hunter wouldn’t simply go away, especially after his rather spectacular entrance. He made it all the way to the little Mom and Pop shop he’d noticed on the way into town that served all-day breakfast, remembering the poorly concealed excitement with which Dean had pointed it out, when it occurred to Sam that he should have taken a few more precautions than simply tucking a gun into his pants. 

It was too late, though; Gordon struck just as he was stepping out of the shop. It was quick and clean, and Sam had a moment to think, _“I’m an idiot,”_ before he was unconscious.

[ ](http://s160.photobucket.com/albums/t192/GoldSnitcher/Fic%20art/Supernatural/?action=view&current=Divisor1.jpg)

Sam kept his eyes closed as he took stock. His head was splitting with pain and there was a sticky warmth striping the side of his face and streaking across the bridge of his nose. His shoulders were stiff and a little sore and his arms and legs were bound to a metal chair.

“You can open your eyes, Sam,” Gordon Walker said. 

Sam opened his eyes to see that he was in the kitchen of an old wooden shack. An ancient wood-burning stove standing opposite him, on the same wall as old iron pots and pans, hung up beside a wooden shelf featuring floral-patterned dishes. If Dean had been in his place, he’d have likely had a quip or two to make about those dishes. As it was, Sam’s head hurt, and Gordon was sitting, calm as ever, perched on an old table by a boarded-up window. There was a shotgun lying across his lap.

“What do you want from me, Gordon?” 

“From you?” Gordon asked, his tone light. “Nothing.” 

Sam frowned, uncertain if it was merely the ache in his head, or if Gordon really was making little to no sense. “What?”

“I’m not here for you, Sam. I’ve been following wolf sightings, _lone_ -wolf sightings, all with the same description. Imagine my surprise when I realized those sightings corresponded to when little Sammy Winchester was pulling through town.” Gordon slid off the table. “Is he tracking you, or are you helping him?”

Sam bit-down on the surge of panic that threatened to rear inside him, tried to remind himself that Gordon hadn’t said anything Sam hadn’t already suspected. Though he had hoped maybe he was wrong, that maybe Gordon hadn’t managed to track Dean and was simply hoping to give Sam some payback. 

He kept his expression flat as he said, “What are you talking about?”

“I’m sorry to steal you away from that fine piece of tail you’ve found, but you seem to have forgotten that there is a wild, fierce animal that will rip you apart as soon as look at you wandering free since we last met.”

Sam tipped his head back and wished he could just _think_ through all the pain. “Dean.”

Gordon shook his head. “I don’t care about him, I’m talking about the wolf.”

Sam couldn’t help thinking, _‘So am I,’_ but he held back.

Gordon saw through him just the same, the sneering look of disgust making Sam snarl. “So you set the wolf free in more ways than just the one, huh?” Gordon’s features smoothed out as he grinned, his bright teeth gleaming in the darkness of the cabin. “It doesn’t matter. It’s even better, I suppose.” He slid back into place on the table. “You can be bait.”

“Bait for what?” Sam asked, forcing himself to laugh even though it felt like his head was splitting in half. “For Dean? He won’t come. He’s not stupid.” Gordon raised his eyebrows like he didn’t believe that. “You’re not gonna kill another hunter, Gordon. Play this tough-guy bullshit card all you want, I’m not buying it.”

“You’re pretty confident.”

“Yeah, I am.” Sam wasn’t surprised by the gun that Gordon wedged-up beneath his jaw; he kept his gaze calm and steady and stared right back at the man.

“You’re right, though,” Gordon shrugged after a moment. “Only thing I’m here to kill is the wolf.”

“Well, as it turns out, there is no wolf. So you can go on your way.”

“You think I’m stupid?” Gordon asked. Sam figured it didn’t pay to press his luck any more than he was already doing. “Just because he can look like a human some of the time, doesn’t mean he can hide what he is.”

“And what is that.”

“Evil,” Gordon said. “Mongrels that hell spat out to destroy humanity. They’re no better than demons, Sam.” He paced away as he continued, “I can see how he could have you fooled, though. Pretty face like that. But that won’t stop me from putting a bullet in him.”

“If you can find him,” Sam said. “Which you won’t, because he’ll have gone already.” Or he had damned well better be, Sam thought. 

Gordon laughed. “Has he talked to you at all? As the wolf, I mean.” Sam paused, his eyes flicking back to Gordon because, as far as he knew, Gordon wasn’t supposed to know that Dean could communicate as a wolf. “Didn’t think I knew about that, did’ja. No, it’s not a secret. Not a very well kept one, anyway. It’s how wolves communicate with pack.” 

Gordon nodded, as if Sam’s stunned look was because he couldn’t believe that an evil creature would wish to communicate to other evil creatures of its kind. “He wouldn’t speak to me like that because he sure as hell didn’t consider me pack, but you…” Gordon grinned again. “You don’t even need to say anything, I can tell just from your face right now.”

“So what,” Sam said, trying to brush off the shock. “So I’m pack. I’m not the only one.”

“Well, you obviously don’t understand how wolves feel about pack...or mates.” Gordon smirked. “After all, they have only the one.”

“We’re not _mates,_ ” Sam said, but his mind was racing through the past months with Dean, memories coming forward, one after the other as Sam kept thinking _‘is it true? It can’t be true’_. The more he thought about it, the more Sam began to wonder, a flickering hope marked quickly be the severity of his current situation. 

He forced himself to shrug nonchalantly. “I got him back on his feet, we went on a few hunts and we messed around. It’s not some mystical bond, and it sure as hell isn’t for life.” 

It ached to say, hurt to even think of parting ways with Dean, but he couldn’t stop himself hoping that it was true. That Dean had done the smart thing and gotten the hell out of town the minute he realized Sam had gone missing. Gordon wouldn’t kill Sam, would likely let him go after a few days without further trouble. Dean would be safe, and that was what mattered.

There was a rumble-clatter that filled the air, like an avalanche. Gordon expression turned immensely pleased as he stowed his gun in his belt and checked his shotgun, then settled a gag around Sam’s mouth. 

“Wolf trap,” he explained. He took a closer look at Sam’s expression and said, “It’s nothing personal, Sam. But your boyfriend is a feral animal with all the strength and skill of hell itself and I _will_ put him down. Your father would have understood what needed to be done. Hell, he’d have done it himself months ago.” 

“Hey, Gordie,” an all-too familiar voice drawled, all too casually. Sam’s eyes widened as he twisted his head round, caught-sight of Dean leaning against the doorframe. Gordon fired off a shot that Dean easily sidestepped. 

“Is that any way to greet an old friend?” Gordon fired off another blast from his shotgun, and Dean leapt and _shifted_. 

It was a seamless transition from man to wolf, his front paws knocking into Gordon’s chest and bringing the man crashing onto the ground. Dean bounded off, leaving the man dazed on the floor as he rounded on Sam, his sharp teeth latching onto the rope that kept his hands fastened behind his back. 

Dean managed a few tugs, loosening the bonds before Gordon finished righting himself, no longer dazed from the fall, and pulling the gun from his belt and took aim. Dean looked up at Sam’s frantic grunts, choked-off by the gag, but he got the message. 

He pivoted impossibly fast, swiping the gun out of Gordon’s hands and then dodging as the hunter pulled a silver knife, the serrated edge of the blade cutting into Dean’s foreleg. Sam worked his hands, struggling to get them free of the bonds Dean had loosened as he watched both hunter and wolf grapple. 

After a short but violent skirmish, Dean stepped back, his fur bristling and teeth bared in answer to Gordon’s broad grin. The man’s clothes were torn and his face was scratched, ripped by the wolf’s claws. Dean hadn’t ripped out the man’s throat, though, and Sam realized with a start that Dean had no intention of killing the other hunter.

That feeling certainly wasn’t mutual. 

A moment later Gordon lunged forward again and Dean was off out of the shack, Gordon staggering after him, neither as fast nor as graceful as the wolf had been, but ten times more determined. 

Left alone, Sam managed at last to wriggle his hands free. He ripped the gag out of his mouth with one hand as the other started to undo the rope around his legs until, finally free, he scrambled to the table. There was a collection of blades and weapons that Gordon had left among which sat the weapons he had taken off of Sam before he had secured him to the chair. Sam took back his gun and the knife he kept in a holster around his ankle. He checked his gun, popping out the cartridge to check the number of rounds, before sliding it back into place.

In the distance there was the sound of a skirmish, yelps and whimpers chased by low grunts and all-too human snarls. Sam wondered if Dean was at a disadvantage facing Gordon in wolf form, but figured that if that were the case, he would never have shifted. There was certainly something to say about the four sets of incredibly sharp claws Dean sported as a wolf, not to mention the teeth. 

Sam moved out onto the front porch of the shack and took in, all at once, the darkness of the sky at twilight, the stretch of shadowed grass, tall and unkempt but lush and green that cut-off abruptly a the dense line of trees. 

There were rapid-fire shots, four consecutive booming rips of sound, and Sam went hot and then cold, tried to comprehend how any one of those shots might have missed their mark. A moment later, Gordon came staggering out of the woods, his pace too frantic to have successfully subdued his attacker.

Almost in slow motion, Sam followed the line on which the other hunter was racing, noticed a faint glinting in the grass that he realized came from a silver blade that Gordon must had hidden in the grass. The man was heading straight for it, and Sam could see the next few moments playing out in his head. How Dean would race from out of the trees in pursuit, he’d lunge and Gordon would raise the blade, and Dean’s forward momentum would impale him. 

Sam was off the steps in the same instant he had the thought. Barreling into Gordon hard enough to slam him away from the knife and back into the grass. He fumbled until he had the man pinned with an elbow around his neck, but hesitated. 

“You gonna strangle me, Sam?” Gordon laughed. There was blood spilling from his mouth, coloring his teeth red. “Aren’t you forgetting something?” he asked. “I’m _human_.”

Sam pressed harder, and Gordon’s smile dropped a little, but he was still assured as he said, “you won’t.”

“You sure about that?” Sam said. “I’ve been thinking about what you said. The way I see it, all it comes down to is whether I will do whatever it takes to protect my pack.” 

The memory of his father passed through his head. His father’s eyes steady and unblinking, staring right at Sam. He had hesitated then because revenge wasn’t worth the cost of taking an innocent life. Sam wasn’t going to make that mistake again.

He could tell himself that Gordon Walker wasn’t very nice, that the given type of man he was, he would have been a serial killer if he couldn’t have been a hunter; that he was killing things not because of what they _did_ , but because of what he thought they _were_ : harmless vampires, werewolves, who knew what else. 

The truth, though, was that Gordon Walker would never stop, not ever, and Sam refused to lose anyone else because he couldn’t do what it took to protect what he cared about.

 _“Family’s everything, Sammy,”_ his dad’s voice echoed through his memories. _“Nothing else, none of it, matters.”_ On the ground, Gordon’s eyes opened impossibly wide, reading something on Sam’s face. _“Sooner or later,”_ John had said, _“you’re going to realize that.”_

Sam pulled back his hands and in one quick movement, he snapped Gordon’s head to the side. He could barely hear the crack over the roaring of blood in his own ears, but he watched the rigid tension leach from Gordon’s body as his head sagged back at an unnatural angle. Sam carefully lowered him back down, and jogged towards the trees.

He found Dean just inside the woods. There was blood matting his fur but he brushed off Sam’s concerned questioning with a few mental grumbles, insisting he wasn’t a baby, that he was fine. He sat still, a pale shadow just within the tree line as Sam jogged back to the cabin, collecting the clothes Dean had shed. 

When Sam returned, Dean had his nose tipped up, scenting the air. Sam wondered if he could smell death on the wind, if maybe Sam himself smelled like Gordon’s last breath. He dropped Dean’s clothes onto the ground and turned his back, tried to focus on breathing. 

A moment later, Dean’s very human voice said, “What are you turning your back for?” Sam huffed a tired laugh and turned around, his hand tilting Dean’s chin so he could examine the darkening bruises, the slice across one brow that was still leaking blood. “I’m fine. None of it’s too deep. It stings like a sonofabitch, though. God damned silver.” Sam caught the hand Dean raised to rub at the cut, stopping the man from exacerbating his injuries. “What happened to Gordon?”

“Dead,” Sam said. Dean went still, his eyes shifting cautiously over Sam’s face, searching for something, though for what, Sam couldn’t be sure.

“Okay,” Dean said, then cleared his throat. “Okay.”

[ ](http://s160.photobucket.com/albums/t192/GoldSnitcher/Fic%20art/Supernatural/?action=view&current=Divisor.jpg)

Sam would have followed Dean right into the shower, but the other man wouldn’t let him, batting off the fussing with a promise that if anything needed more than a band aid he’d let Sam treat it. While he waited, Sam flipped on the television unable to focus on a show but unwilling to sit in the quiet.

“You’re a damned worrywart,” Dean scolded when he stepped out of the bathroom, freshly washed, with the traces of silver cleaned out his cuts. 

Sam eyed him critically, his eyes coming to rest on Dean’s forearm where Gordon’s had scored a deep cut with his blade. “That needs stitches.”

Dean shrugged, but settled onto the edge of the bed, holding out his arm when Sam brought over the med-kit. Sam disinfected the wound, despite Dean’s instance that he had just _done_ that, and then set to work, happy for something to concentrate on.

The silence was thick and heavy, like it was waiting for something. Sam frowned at the skin he was holding together and stitching. “He wouldn’t have ever stopped,” he said, his voice coming out quieter than he’d meant it to. 

“I know.”

“I had to,” Sam said. “I just…” he sounded a bit frantic, even to his own ears, and he couldn’t afford to be. Maybe later, after he’d finished stitching, if he had to fall apart then he would. “It felt like with my dad all over again. Like the choice was someone I loved or someone I didn’t know, or barely… and maybe before it was different, because I was trying to think of a different way, a better way. But there was no other way this time, any other choice would have just been temporary and…”

“I would have done the same.” The steady way he said it had Sam flick his gaze up to Dean’s face. 

The promise was heavy between them, and they both knew that it wasn’t exactly a sane sort of pact to be making, but it was nonetheless necessary. There were ignorant people who would try to hunt them down and hurt them; hunt Dean down, for what he was. They were the same people who had shot and killed Dean’s family when he was young, who hunted still, and took captives and enslaved people sometimes. 

Bobby said it was because they didn’t understand, but Sam couldn’t bring himself to believe that. They were like Gordon, killing because of what they thought they knew. If they hunted based on action they wouldn’t be tracking werewolf packs as they went to ground, trying to hide and protect each other. They would wait until one went rogue and killed, or they’d hunt the skinwalkers and shapeshifters and other things that hurt, but only _when_ they hurt. Otherwise they were hypocrites. 

They lapsed back into silence, and Sam went back to his careful stitching. “He said that wolves mate for life,” he said, finally laying voice to what had been circling in his thoughts since Gordon had first planted the notion.

Dean’s eyes were focused on his forearm, on the slice in his arm that Sam was mending. When he answered, it was grudging. “Yeah.”

Sam shook his head a little wryly. “You were trying to tell me from the start,” he said, finishing the last stitch and turning to drop the needle onto the nightstand. “I’m not just pack…”

“It’s not some mystical bullcrap, okay?” Dean said, his tone sounding defensive to Sam’s ears. “It could have been anyone, and it’s not like the fates bent the universe to bring us together or something. It just means…” he let out a breath. “It just means ‘maybe’.”

Sam nodded, his eyes focused on Dean’s expression as he turned the other man’s words over in his head. When Dean finally met his eyes, Sam said, “We’ve been on the road together for over six months.” He cleared his throat, asked, “What do you think now?” 

Dean licked his lips, his gaze darting away and then back again. “I think,” he said. “Yeah.” 

Sam felt like a weight had been pushed off his shoulders, relief rushing through him so quickly he was almost dizzy with it. He raised a teasing eyebrow and said, “Yeah?”

Dean grinned. “ _Hell,_ yeah.” 

Sam pressed his smile against Dean’s mouth, breathed in the bright citrusy scent of the other man’s soap. Thought, _‘we’re alive’_ and _‘we’re together’_ and _‘I’m never letting go’_ , read the echoing promise in the curve of Dean’s bottom lip, the trace of his teeth against Sam’s mouth. It was unconventional, maybe, but they were pack, at least the start of one. Him and Dean, and a gruff old hunter who liked to pretend he enjoyed solitude, but had taught Sam that family didn’t end with blood. Maybe he had taught Dean that as well, or maybe Dean had always known.

Maybe down the line there would be others, more wolves, more friends. But one thing at least Sam knew with a total conviction that only grew stronger with every passing moment, with every exhaled gasp that Dean released and Sam breathed in. _‘Mates. Mine’_ , he thought, _‘hell yeah.’_

[](http://s160.photobucket.com/albums/t192/GoldSnitcher/Fic%20art/Supernatural/?action=view&current=Line6.jpg)


End file.
